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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 









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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 





SOURCES OF HISTORY 



PENTATEUCH 



SIX LECTURES DELIVERED IN PRINCETON THEO- 
LOGICAL SEMINARY, ON THE STONE 
FOUNDATION, MARCH, 1882 




BY 



_^ 



SAMUEL C. BARTLETT, D.D., LL.D. 

President of Dart7nouth College 




New York 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 

900 BROADWAY, COR. 20th STREET 



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Copyright, 1883, 
By Anson D. F. Randolph & Company 



ST. JOHNLAND PRINTED PY 

STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, EDWARD O. JENKINS, 

SUFFOLK CO., N. Y. 20 NORTH WILLIAM ST., N. Y. 



V CONTENTS 



LECTURE FIRST. 

THE EAELIEST COSMOQONX 1 

LECTURE SECOND. 

EAELY MAN 36 

LECTURE THIRD. 

THE EAELY AETS 76 

LECTURE FOURTH. 

THE EAELY CONSANGUINITIES 116 

LECTURE FIFTH. 

THE EAELY MOVEilENTS OF THE NATIONS . . 148 

LECTURE SIXTH. 

THE EAELY DOCUMENTS 180 

APPENDIX. 

EXTEACT EEOM STEACK ON THE PENTATEUCH . 217 



SOURCES OF HISTORY IN THE 
PENTATEUCH. 



LECTURE FIRST. 



THE EARLIEST COSMOaONY. 



The five books of Moses, like the Revela- 
tion of which they form the grand propyl£e- 
um, have in our day been chiefly put upon 
the defensive. As many a writer, indebted 
to the Christian system for his ethics, has 
received the gift and disparaged the source, 
so have a large class of investigators gained 
invaluable and indispensable aid from the 
Pentateuch, and then endeavored to use its 
own frank utterances to invalidate its autho- 
rity. And so the portico has been viewed 
rather as a beleageured fortress. 

I propose in this brief course of lectures 
to abandon the negative position and set 
forth in the direct and affirmative aspect 
the claims of the Pentateuch as a book of 
origins, containing the sources of all our 



2 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

earliest consecutive knowledge, and alone 
solving those great questions concerning the 
human race which must be asked and which 
lie otherwise unanswered. While an unpar- 
alleled assiduity and variety of research are 
enlarging the boundaries of our knowledge 
of the past, and a marvellous ingenuity is 
unlocking the historic secrets which seemed 
to have perished with their original possess- 
ors, it remains none the less true that these 
results are fragmentary and often incoherent, 
till thev are laid beside the one central and 
continuous story. This is the substantive ac- 
count, they are the adjuncts. For unexplored 
centuries down to the time of him who is 
called the Father of History, the Pentateuch 
walks alone but with unfaltering step over 
the pathway of the past. And it is begin- 
ning to appear more and more clearly, as I 
shall attempt incidentally to show, that our 
function is not to defend it, much less to 
apologize for it, but to unfold, explain and 
follow its guidance, properly understood, in 
the well-grounded assurance that it will give 
more light than it receives from these mod- 
ern researches, that they are to be brought 
thither in good degree to be tested, and that 
they must be laid beside it in order to give 
them any complete colierence and valid sig- 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY, 3 

nificance. And in a great measure their nse 
is to serve as furnishing the illustrative facts, 
whereby its brief statements and often ob- 
scure hints shall be clearly understood. In 
discussing this subject it is inevitable to 
begin with the familiar if not hackneyed 
theme of The Earliest Cosmogony. The dis- 
cussion is by no means superfluous. For 
perhaps no theme has suffered more in the 
handling, whether from friendly or hostile 
pens. Largely, if not chiefly, from misap- 
prehension of the aim and method. 

All fair criticism of any composition must 
proceed from a recognition not only of its 
nature, as poetry, philosophy, narrative and 
the like, but, if it be history, of the class for 
whom it is written, the end in view, and 
therefore the method adopted. To deal fairly 
with the Creation-narrative such consideration 
is absolutely indispensable. I address my- 
self therefore first to these questions. What 
then is the nature of the composition? 

Now, then, it is idle to designate this sim- 
ple record as anything else than a narrative. 
To call it a parable as some have done, or a 
psalm of Creation with others, is doing vio- 
lence to the most obvious facts. There are 
psalms of Creation, pre-eminently the one hun- 
dred and fourth psalm, which, as Von Hum- 



4 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

boldt ^ has well said, represents '' the image 
of the Cosmos," sketching with a few bold 
touches the whole universe, the heavens and 
the earth. That is manifestly poetry. But if 
any records in the Old Testament read like 
plain veritable history, the first chapter of 
Genesis surely is one of them. Nothing could 
be more sober, simple, matter-of-fact. 

But for whom was it written? For no one 
class, but for all classes, ages, races, condi- 
tions, — for mankind. This fact carries con- 
sequences. 

With what aim was it written ? Clearly, 
not for its own separate value, but as a need- 
ful brief introduction to the revelation of God 
for man's redemption, — a preliminary explana- 
tion. Again, not chiefly for his intellectual 
education, but for his moral enlightenment 
and religious impression; not for complete- 
ness of science, but for the uses of duty and 
piety. This too carries consequences. 

These and other considerations fix our at- 
tention on the method of the narrative — a 
matter of vital importance for its right inter- 
pretation. A failure to recognize distinctly 
the writer s method is wholly to lose the clue 
to any right apprehension or even fair treat- 
ment of the record. 

« Humboldt's "Cosmos," ii. pp. 58-9 (Ain. Trans.) 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 5 

(1.) The first fact of method that we are 
bound to consider, is its singular, I might 
well say, its amazing brevity. The narrative 
is here foreshortened to an unparalleled de- 
gree. Some thirty short verses are made to 
contain the whole formation of this universe, 
from its inception to its completion. Now 
casting aside all the wilder claims sometimes 
made for hundreds and thousands of millions 
of years'^ since life began, and taking the 
more moderate estimate of Sir William Thom- 
son, some years ago, of from seventy to one 
hundred millions of years,^ or the later and 
much more moderate estimate of Tait* which 
gives from ten to fifteen millions as the past 
limit of the present order of things — the time 
since the globe became fitted for the exist- 
ence of life — or the later estimate of Professor 
C. A. Young ^ which assigns eighteen millions 

2 Thus Haeckel: *'The organic history of the earth must 
not be calculated by thousands of years, but by pal^on- 
tological or geological periods, zach of which comprises 
many thousands of years and perhaps even millions or 
milliards of thousands of years." "It is most advisable 
from a philosophical point of view to conceive this period 
of creation to be as long as possible " ("History of Crea- 
tion," ii. p. 337). 

3 Geike in his " Geology " (London, 1S82, p. 55,) still fa- 
vors "not much less than a hundred million years." 

4 "Eecent Advances of Physical Science," p. 167. 

5 "The Sun," p. 277. 



6 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

of years as the longest limit of the past dura- 
tion of the solar system, we should have on 
the highest estimate, an average of from three 
to five millions of years, and on the lowest 
estimate, of half a million of years, to a verse. 
What an unexampled compression ! Suppose 
a writer were required distinctly and vividly 
to set forth the history of the world for six 
thousand years, or of Europe for nineteen 
hundred, or of America for two hundred and 
fifty, in the compass of thirty sentences, what 
would be the result? I can think of nothing 
whereby to illustrate the process so effectu- 
ally as an attempt to draw a map of North 
America in the space of a square inch. Con- 
sider how details must disappear; rivers, 
mountains and lakes of great magnitude are 
wholly lost; the manifold indentations of the 
coast give way to straight or slightly bent 
lines; and a few brief strokes of the pencil 
take the place of an indefinite amount and 
variety of configurations. It is but an out- 
line sketch, — correct but necessarily incom- 
plete. Now in like manner the exceeding 
brevity of this narrative necessitates (a) the 
omission and disregard of details. It is and 
can be but a graphic outline sketch, drawn 
with bold characterizing strokes, overlooking 
all minor particulars, even all modifying qual* 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 7 

ifications and minute exceptions. This fact 
at once obviates the necessity and propriety 
of dealing with and looking for any but the 
great characterizing features. If, for exam- 
ple, some lower (marsupial)^ form of mammal 
life anticipated the great outburst of mam- 
mals upon the earth we can no more expect 
that the narrative should specify it than that 
our square-inch map should recognize Curri- 
tuck Inlet or Cape Ann. The only expansion 
it admits is the rhetorical fulness of expres- 
sion which shall make clear, impressive and 
vivid its sweeping outline statements. 

This brevity carries another feature, viz., (&) 
a continuous forward movement and final dis- 
missal of facts once narrated in their order. 
This is a feature of the narrative most im- 
portant to be recognized. It passes steadily 
on from stage to stage, with the successive 
steps, or rather germs of progress. It marks 
the initiation of one stage of the creation, then 
proceeds to another, but never afterwards re- 
sumes its account of the former though it 
may have been a long-continued process, not 
intermitted even when another supervenes. 
The narrative describes each new movement 
in succession, and then dismisses it finally. 

^ e. g., The Microlestes and Dromatherium, marsupials 
and therefore semi viviparous, in the Trias. 



8 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

And from this fact follows another noticeable 
and important feature of the narrative, viz., 
(c) that the announcement and dismissal of 
a given set of phenomena, — any distinct branch 
of the creative work, — seeing that it is not to 
be resumed and further narrated in the sequel, 
is summed up and described as a wliole^ in its 
completeness. It is the briefest possible method 
of dispatching the subject. This fact meets 
us unmistakably in regard to the formation 
of the continents and the vegetable system, 
in regard to the introduction of all the various 
forms of life, and even, as we have reason to 
believe, in reference to the functions of the 
heavenly bodies, — each of which processes 
was the work of long ages. 

This singular condensation, with its three 
subordinate points, of grand characterization 
with omission of details, steady forward move- 
ment without recapitulation, and the summing 
up and dismissal of each branch of the process, 
announced in its totality and completeness, 

removes nearlv all the real and serious diffi- 

t/ 

culties of the narration. Other less serious, 
though more obvious occasions of question- 
ing are met by considering, 

(2.) Another governing quality of method, 
viz., its design to be intelligible to the hu 
man race. This purpose carries by necessity 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 9 

certain qualities which require only to be 
mentioned, to be recognized: (a) the narra- 
tive is, as a description, thoroughly popular 
and not in the slightest degree scientific. It 
sets forth obvious and recognizable results, 
and makes no attempt at a scientific account 
of the processes. A statement of the scien- 
tific aspects of the case, had it been revealed 
to the narrator, would have found, for more 
than three thousand years, not only no per- 
son capable of comprehending, but none cap- 
able of receiving it. Such a narrative would 
have been, down to the present century, a 
hopeless stumbling-block at the threshold of 
the sacred word. But the sacred history avoids 
everything that is scientific, and is, as was in- 
dispensable, completely popular in its method. 
And one very noticeable aspect of the narra- 
tive viewed in this light is that, instead of 
fixing the attention upon the process, it de- 
scribes quite commonly by the result, — that re- 
sult bein g often simple enough of recognition as 
a mere outward sign^ but marking changes the 
most immense and stupendous, — such changes 
as must have preceded the appearance of a 
visible welkin, or the disclosure of sun, moon 
and stars. (6) Another kindred feature is 
the necessary absence of everything like a 
technical term. The Hebrew language, in- 



10 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

deed, offered no such mechanism of speech. 
If the case had been otherwise, it would have 
been Avholly ahen from the writers aim and 
method. The nai-rative througliout is clothed 
with all the drapery and attractiveness of the 
language and scenery of human life and ac- 
tion. We have no universe, ro itav or ra 
Tcdvza^ but ''the heavens and the earth"; no 
mammals, but "cattle and creeping thing and 
beast of the earth"; no atmosphere (as Gaussen^ 
would find in the ''firmament"), but simply 
^'heaven," or the visible sky; no chaos, but 
"emptiness and desolation" (Hebrew); no 
cosmic gas, nor chemical elements uncon- 
densed and un combined, but "the deep"; no 
molecular action, but the " brooding" of God's 
spirit. When the grains and the fruit-trees 
are described as bearing "after their kind" 
it is therefore simply characterizing by the 
most obvious marks, and no assertion, as some 
unwisely claim, of any recondite doctrine of 
immutability of species. Nor can we fairly 
find, even with the eminent Benjamin Pierce, 
the "light" put as a representative of "the 
forces of Nature " — a scientific conception. It 
stands simply for itself, — light. ' God himself, 
instead of putting forth volitions, "says," as 
though audibly speaking, "let there be light"; 

7 Gaussen, *'The World's Birth Day," pp. 93 seq. 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 11 

he gives names to the objects; he communes 
with himself; he contemplates the results with 
satisfaction, pronouncing them "good," "very 
good." It is all part of the graphic, untech- 
nical, human method, which should meet the 
apprehension and arrest the attention of any 
and every member of the human race. And 
it is strictly in keeping with this same method, 
that the several stages of the creative process 
are represented under the vivid aspect of so 
many successive day's works of the Creator, 
— which, as Bunsen suggests, ^ is the simplest 
mode of viewing the whole matter. And thus 
instead of geological epoch or era, for which 
the Hebrew language offered no phraseology 
and the human mind for many thousand years 
no receptivity, we have God's "day," the vast 
extent of which the researches of future ages 
alone should unfold. But of this more in the 
sequel, (c). Another obvious as well as need- 
ful aspect of this method, is that it is purely 
a phenomenal description. All is represented 
as it appeared, or would have appeared, to 
the eye of the beholder. And this fact has 
even suggested to Godet, Kurtz, Miller and 
others, the idea of an original revelation in 
vision, by a series of what might be called 
dioramic representations passing before the 

8 '*Bibelwerk ," Gen. i. 5. 



12 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

mental eye, opened and closed by its succes- 
sion of darkness and light. Such a supposi- 
tion, though not an impossible one, and though 
in some respects facilitating the explanation, 
is by no means necessary. It is enough to 
recognize the unmistakable fact that the de- 
scription is phenomenal — not necessarily vis- 
ional, but chiefly visual or optical. This fea- 
ture appears beyond question in the case of 
the heavenly bodies, described not as they 
are, the sun a luminary, the moon a reflect- 
ing satellite, but as they appear in the hea- 
vens, the one to rule the day, the other the 
night. This indeed may be emphasized as a 
test case in regard to the character of the 
whole narrative. But the same characteristic 
appears more or less clearly in all the other 
parts of the history — the visible heaven di- 
viding waters from waters, the obvious dis- 
tinctions of the forms of vegetation, the 
*' stretched out " creatures, the winged crea- 
tures flying "oTi the face'' (Hebrew) of the 
expanse of heaven, and *' everything that 
creepeth upon the earth,'' — for so they look 
upon the great globe — all of it phenomenal 
and even pictorial. 

All these qualities of method grow so nat- 
urally out of the aim of the narrator, and lie 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 13 

SO manifestly on the face of the narrative, 
that when once clearly stated, they cannot 
fail to be recognized as alike true and impor- 
tant. But the actual non-recognition of them 
has been the constant stumbling-block. No 
intelligent apprehension and no fair and can- 
did treatment of the narrative can overlook 
their bearing. We might as well ignore the 
dramatic character of Job or the figurative 
phraseology of the Biblical poetry. This is 
narrative, history, — but narrative written in 
a thoroughly popular style and method, in or- 
der to reach all men. I lay all emphasis on 
these several principles, because in them lies 
the clue to the whole narrative ; and its proper 
interpretation comes from their application. 

Applying now these true and simple princi- 
ples to the narrative, how readily we bring 
out in this record, made in the comparative 
infancy of the world, the sharp bold outline 
sketch, of which the world in its supposed 
maturity has only wdthin a century been able 
to supply the multitudinous and often con- 
fused details, and by laying them beside that 
original sketch, so clear that all the world has 
understood it in every essential feature, find 
that there lay the true germ and outline of 
the whole. The chief liability to inadequate 
conception was on the one point of the lapse 



14 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

of time, — a point on which all conception is 
inadequate, and on which it would have been 
not only needless, but worse than useless, to 
attempt conveying an approximate impression 
in advance of the slow gropings and discov- 
eries of investigation. Yet even here the ac- 
count is not destitute of clear hints by which 
bright minds like Augustine's long ago pro- 
fited, to see that the " day " of God's working 
was of unknown duration, and might be to 
man's day somewhat in the ratio of God to 
man.® 

Shall I now rapidly unfold this sketch of 
creation in the double light of its own obvious 
plan of description, and the latest results of 
investigation. 

"The beginning" was evidently prior to 
all existences in this universe of ours, except 
that of God the Creator. The "heavens and 
the earth " are clearly the visible universe. 
" Creation " in the first verse cannot well be 
understood of anything short of absolute or- 
igination, not alone or chiefly (1) because the 

9 Says Augustine: " What kind of days they are is either 
very difficult or quite impossible for us to think, much 
more to express. For we see that the days we know have 
their evening only by the setting of the sun, and their 
morning by its rising. But the first three were spent with- 
out the sun, which is related to have been made on the 
fourth" {''Civitate Deiy" xi. 6, 7). 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 15 

Hebrew Xin is the proper word to express 
such a thought, even more specific than the 
English '' create," being used forty-eight times 
in the Kal conjugation and always having God 
for its subject, never accompanied with an ac- 
cusative of material, and being employed to 
describe the Divine production, in the king- 
dom of nature or of grace, of what had no exist- 
ence before, nor even alone (2) because such 
is apparently the exposition given in Heb. xi. 
3; but necessarily (3) by the exigencies of the 
narrative — inasmuch as every plastic process 
is subsequently described, and so exhaustively 
as to leave nothing for the "creation" except 
origination of the material. If it be said that 
the absolute origination of matter passes all 
comprehension and conception, we reply, of 
course, so do all things ultimate; and it is, so 
to speak, less incomprehensible that an al- 
mighty power could originate it, than that an 
inert material could have been self-existent, 
self-originated, or eternal. 

It is important to observe that the second 
verse cuts clear of the universe at large, or 
even of the solar system, and confines itself to 
''the earth." This fact would seem to pre- 
clude the view advanced by so high scientific 
authorities as Guyot and Dana, that in a sub- 
sequent verse the dividing of the waters from 



16 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

the waters was the separation of the earth 
from the nebula of which it was a part, and 
forces us to a simpler and narrower explana- 
tion. "The earth" — to which our attention 
is now confined — was after its creation "with- 
out form and void," literally *' wasteness and 
emptiness," in other words a chaotic mass, 
described by two archaic Hebrew words, 
inhi ^nn, and in the next breath designated 
as ''the deep"; perhaps because no other than 
this last term could so vividly describe the 
vast, confused, unstable and, it may be, heav- 
ing and roaring mass of material in its earlier 
stages, as the vast ocean abyss. For ''the 
spirit of God" at length "moved" or rather 
brooded upon it, began a steady and long 
continued agency, — there being no necessity 
of limiting this process to the initial stage, 
inasmuch as the word "brood" hints other- 
wise. And in this " brooding," the chaos deep 
is now described as "the waters," a phrase 
which both retains the figure of the ocean and 
may suggest the mobile, not to say fluid, con- 
dition of the material, which scientists affirm 
to have been once gaseous or nebulous. There 
was a stage when all was darkness ; then came 
the creation of light, "offspring of heaven first 
born." Nothing would help us to explain the 
whole transaction recorded in a single verse 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 17 

(3rd) SO well as the acceptance not alone of 
the nebular theory — though not cleared of all 
objections, e. g.^ the lack of certain elements 
in the sun which are prominent in the earth, 
— but even of the plausible speculations of 
Lockyer, viz., that "the chemical elements 
themselves are one kind of matter under 
differently aggregated forms, at first dif- 
fused through the universe; that atom co- 
alesced with atom, singly or in groups, and 
that the most primitive of our elements, such 
as hydrogen, were formed. Further and fur- 
ther aggregations took place, the equally dif- 
fused matter became more and more con- 
densed, in certain parts forming distinct 
nebulae, which went on shrinking more and 
more, and increasing in density as they di- 
minished in size, until, to take a single in- 
stance, the matter which uniformly filled a 
space much greater than the entire solar 
system, became condensed into the bodies 
of the sun and planets, leaving between them 
only that thin impalpable substance to which 
we give the name of ether. The shock of 
the atoms as they struck against each other, 
not only gave them a motion of revolution, 
but raised them to a temperature of which 
we have scarcely any conception, and which 
rendered the existence not only of com- 



18 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

pounds, but of many of the actual metals 
themselves, impossible." ^° This would help 
us, if we might accept it, though it is not 
indispensable. 

Fixing now the attention on the supposed 
stage of the process when the great chemical 
combination and condensation began in good 
earnest, accompanied by an intense and in- 
conceivable heat — when the material of our 
earth suddenly shrank from what Dawson 
suggests" as two thousand times its present 
diameter towards some approximation to its 
present dimensions — and you have now that 
intense molecular activity which, as Professor 
Dana remarks, " would show itself instantly by 
a manifestation of light," and *' a flash of light 
through the universe would be the first an- 
nouncement of the work begun." 

But observe that the statement, ** there was 
light," gives a fact that is not so much signi- 
ficant for itself as in its being the sign, the re- 
markable sign, of the most enormous changes 
not otherwise set forth. This, it will be ob- 
served again, is characteristic of the whole 
narrative. The existence of light before the 
manifestation of the sun, and independent of 
it, was the stumbling-block of Voltaire a cen- 

10 Brunton's *^ Science and the Bible," p. 340-1. 
»i ** Story of the Earth and Man," p. 9. 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY, 19 

tury since, and of an English churchman ^^ but 
twenty years ago, but offers no difficulty to a 
well taught school-boy. This sudden breaking 
in of light upon the scene of long preceding 
darkness, like an evening followed by a morn- 
ing, falls in with, perhaps gives rise to, the 
imagery of a divine day's work, thenceforward 
maintained through the narrative, — although 
afterwards the terms morning and evening 
are perhaps generalized to denote the begin- 
ning and ending of a formative period, or 
(Lange) "the interval of a creative day." 
That this word " day " does not signify a solar 
day we are warned by the fact stated in the 
narrative, that the solar day was not yet pro- 
vided for, a fact which long ago intimated to 
such minds as Augustine's and Bede's ^^ that 
a solar day was not intended. When the 
narrative ascribes the formation of the oceans 
and continents to a part of one day, it therein 
describes a fact which by the laws of hydro- 
statics could not completely take place in any 

'2C. A. Goodwin, Oxford, ''Essays and Keviews," p. 246. 

13 Says Bede (Comment, in Pentateuchum, Vol. ii. p. 194, 
Migne), " ' Unus dies.' Fortassis hie diei nomen totius 
temporis nomen est, et omnia volamina saeculorum hoc 
Yocabulo includit." In his Hexaemeron (i. D.) he speaks 
however as though the day were of twenty-four hours ac- 
complished by the going and coming of the light, as now 
of the sun. 



20 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

part of a solar day. When it employs this 
word '' day " with four, if not five different ap- 
plications, in this one narrative (vs. 5, 14, ii. 
4), it thereby warns against the possibility of 
confining it to this one narrow meaning.^'' 
When it mentions God's '*day" of rest from 
creating, it mentions a day which has con- 
tinued now for many thousand years, and 
constrains us by the rules of consistency to 
recognize also his creative days as protracted 
periods. The Biblical idiom and the popular 
speech of man alike justify an indefinite ex- 
tension of the terms,^^ such as the discoveries 
of science compel. If it be said that the clos- 
ing consecration of the seventh day proves 
that we are dealing only with a solar day, we 
answer, the consecration of our seventh day 
does not necessarily identify the actual length 
of God's and man's day of rest, but only the 
ratio in the two cases; as God's resting day to 
his working days, so is man's resting day to 
his working days, the seventh to each of the 
six. The whole series of events was on a 

14 In verse fifth it designates the total succession of light 
and darkness when there was no sun, and also the light 
portion of that period; in verse fourteenth, the solar day, 
and also the light portion of that day; in ch. ii. 4, appar- 
ently, the whole time of the creation. 

16 Day of salvation, visitation, prosperity, adversity; his 
day, my day, etc. 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 21 

colosfial Bcale to which all terms of actual 
rneaRurement are alike inadequate. And in 
treating this topic I prefer saying tliat Dtt 
luliole process is represented under the figure of 
a series of day's works, rather than to insist 
solely on a flexible use of the word ''day " — 
though the latter is a tenable position.^® 

It may be added that the whole aim and in- 
struction of the narrative were subserved just 
as well by leaving for the future unfoldings 
of exploration, the incomprehensible, and, till 
recently, incredible length of these periods of 
creation. The attempted disclosure would 
even have marred the influence and the use- 
fulness of the narrative. 

We can proceed more rapidly. The sec- 
ond day is marked by the ''firmament" 
— the expanse — explained in the record 
as being called heaven. The visible sky, 
the blue welkin, is here designated, — not 
(with Gaussen) the atmosphere, — which 
would be too scientific. And the waters 
below are the ocean, now at length able 

'6 Thus, though the case is not fully parallel, I would 
say that the parable of the unjust judge sets forth God's 
accessibleness to importunate prayer; but here, plainly, 
we cannot properly say that God is represented as an un- 
just judge. 

On the ratio of God's days and man's, see Reusch, 
**Bibel und Natur," p. 128. Bonn, 1876. 



22 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

to lie on the cooler crust of the earth, 
while the waters above, the clouds, are seen 
floating, separated by the visible expanse. For 
the y"*!?") is not \h^ jirmamentum of the Vulgate 
(something hammered solid^^ but something 
hammered out thin, spread out, an expanse. 
But observe that this visible sky, with the 
waters lying beneath and floating aloft, is, like 
the ''light" of the previous day, but the rec- 
ognizable and obvious sign of untold, enor- 
mous changes which have meanwhile gone 
forward. There has been an amazing con- 
densation and combination of elements, in- 
conceivable heat and incandescence of a 
gaseous and molten mass, a long cooling off^' 
till at length the surface is lower than the tem- 
perature 212 degrees, and the disengagement 
of a surrounding atmosphere, widely diff'erent 
from that of to-day, yet such that while a uni- 
versal ocean swathes the earth (as science also 
affirms), dense vapors are borne aloft. All this 
vast history, as we now know, is indicated, or 
covered up by the simple mention of this vis- 
ible sign, a sky with waters above and below 
it ; just as we answer the question, how cold is 

'7 Dana mentions that Helmholtz demands three hun- 
dred and fifty miUions of years for the cooling from 2000 
degrees to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. "Geology," p. 147. 
The statement is given as a curiosity. "The estimate of 
another author," says Dana "is four times this." 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY, 23 

the day, by giving the visible sign, — the mercu- 
ry stands at — 20 degrees. Such is the method. 
The next stage of progress, the third day, 
is indicated by two grand strokes of the pen- 
cil or pen. First the formation of the conti- 
nents, accompanied by the withdrawal of the 
ocean to its bed; a process now well known to 
have preceded all further development. The 
cooling earth wrinkled its huge folds and 
reared the oldest mountain chains. Here ob- 
serve the method. This new order of things 
- — the change — is stated once for all, and, with 
this brief announcement, dismissed ; although 
the process continued through succeeding ages 
usually reckoned as millions of years. The 
first continents were, comparatively speak- 
ing, meagre strips of land. In North America 
the chief original nucleus, the oldest known 
rocks, (*' not the absolute oldest," Le Conte) 
lay in the British Provinces, with the outlying 
Adirondacks, part of the Appalachian line, isl- 
ands in New England, patches in Nova Sco- 
tia and New Brunswick, a Pacific coast range 
in Mexico, and various detached areas in the 
Mississippi basin west, as the Black Hills of 
Dakota. The European Continent was chiefly 
an archipelago as late as the Devonian era 
(Dana). But since their first emergence the 
continents have been enlarging and the moun- 



24 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

tains rising — the Eocky mountains not less 
than eleven thousand feet in the Tertiary age ; 
and the period of comparative rest seems not 
to have been reached till since the great glacial 
epoch. But the narrative has done with it in 
the first and final announcement." 

The other event of this third day was the in- 
troduction of vegetable life. The fragile na- 
ture of plants, and especially of the earliest, 
taken in connection with the vast vicissitudes 
since those remotest eras, is a good reason 
why they are not found in proper form so far 
back as the narrative requires. But the sci- 
entific probability, if not certainty, of their 
existence antecedent, as a whole, to that of 
animal life, appears from the facts (1) that '* a 

'8 Thus, Le Conte affirms that the end of the Cretaceous 
was *' pre-eminently a time of continent-making," there 
occurring at that time "a bodily upheaval of the whole 
western half of the [American] continent, by which the 
great interior sea which previously divided America into 
two continents was abolished, and the continent became 
one." So also "the end of the Jurassic had been pre- 
eminently a time of mountain-making" ("Geology," p. 
475). Dana carries out this last point in detail ("GeoL" 
p. 754) by estimating (on the basis of forty-eight millions 
of years from the beginning of the Silurian period to the 
present) that the interval from the beginning of the Pri- 
mordial "to the uplifts and metamorphism of the Green 
mountains was 20,000,000 years and to the completion of 
the AUeghanies 36,000,000." 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 25 

temperature admitting of the existence of veg- 
etation would have been reached, in the pro- 
cess of refrigeration, before that of animal life :" 
(2) that animals require plants for food, find- 
ing no nutriment in inorganic matter; (3) and 
still more positively from the immense amount 
of graphite with its carbon and of iron ore far 
down in the Laurentian rocks, (and in Europe 
anthracite,) implying former vegetable life.^^ 
So say the geologists. As the earliest vege- 
tables appear to have been sea-weeds, their 
relics could not be expected in any more de- 
fined condition. 

Here we meet one of the few, at first sight, 
serious difficulties. The writer describes the 
whole vegetable world, including "the herb 
yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit." 
But we find by exploration that these belong 
mostly to a very late period of the geological 
history, some of them not long antedating the 
human race. How is this? The answer is 
very simple. Just as in the case of the con- 
tinents, and later in regard to the forms of 
animal life, the writer despatches the whole 

•9 Dana, *' Geology,' p. 157. Le Conte, ''Geology," p. 
274. Geike, "Geology," p. 639. Geike says, "Dr. Sterry 
Hunt has called attention to these [iron] ores as proving 
the precipitation of iron by decomposing vegetation on a 
more gigantic scale than at any subsequent geological 
epoch." 



26 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

subject with one stroke. Since he will noc re- 
cur to the fact, he describes in its complete- 
ness that of which he now narrates the in- 
ception, and so dismisses it finally. This is 
his method. 

But for a long time after the simpler forms 
of vegetation were possible, the geologist has 
shown us that the atmosphere and the earth's 
surface were in a very diflerent condition from 
their present state, and wholly unfitted for the 
present forms of animal life. Not only must 
the higher temperature have filled the air 
constantly with a vast amount of watery 
vapor, wrapping it (to use the figure of 
Le Conte,) as in a double blanket, and mak- 
ing of it a great conservatory or forcing hot- 
house, but it was loaded with all the carbon 
that is now embedded in the coal formation 
and the marble and limestone rocks, the chlo 
rine and sulphurous acids of the various chlo- 
rides and sulphurets and sulphurs of the earth's 
surface — ''an atmosphere," says Sterry Hunt 
''charged with acid gasses, and of immense 
density." '*» 

The fourth day's work is characterized by 
the eventful fact that at length the light of 
the heavenly bodies found its way through 
and shone upon the earth. This again is but 

20 Lecture before the Koyal Institution of London, 1867 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 21 

the striking sign of vast intervening but 
nndescribed changes, that had taken place 
on the earth's surface and in the atmosphere. 
It was a gradual process, for which it is not 
easy to assign the exact and definite location 
in order of time; some placing it (with Miller, 
apparently) after the Carboniferous, others 
better (with Dawson) after the Laurentian, 
itself an era of immense duration. ^^ But 
evidently it must have preceded any except 
the lowest forms of animal life; and hence 
the place it occupies in the narrative conforms 
in general to the known order of nature. Their 
emergence as signs marking off the appointed 
seasons, the "days" and the ''years," was, as 
has been said, the setting up of the great 
world's clock, which has not varied the 
hundred thousandth of a second, some have 
claimed, in 2000 years. ^^ 

But Ave hurry on. The graphic pen-stroke 
that opens the fifth day's work gives us the 

21 * ' It is probable that the Archean era is longer than 
all the rest of the recorded history of the earth put to- 
gether" (Le Conte, "Geology," p. 274). 

22 Mr. E. A. Proctor however says that " the resistance of 
the tidal wave acts as a break constantly retarding the 
earth's turning motion, though so slowly that fifteen hun- 
dred million years would be required to lengthen the ter- 
restrial day by one full hour" ("The Great Pyramid," 
p. 209, note). 



28 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

waters bringing forth abundantly, — *' swarm- 
ing" with living creatures. The earliest life 
was a long marine era, and the geologist, Le 
Conte, unconsciously echoes the very words 
of the Scripture when he says that the '* early 
seas literally swarmed with living beings," 
beginning in the Cambriam, — and that 10,074 
species have been found in the Silurian rocks 
alone. Sea life was the first main exhibition. 
And a mighty exhibition it was. For follow- 
ing close upon these Silurian species, and in 
fact beginning there, came the vast outburst 
of fishes that fill the Old Red Sandstone, or 
Devonian, so full. 

But ''the winged creature," says the narra- 
tive, was to fly ''over the face" (Hebrew) of 
heaven. And in this same Devonian series 
they begin with the ephemeris — Platephemera 
antiqua — of five inches spread of wings, and 
two other species of neuroptera, expanding 
in the Carboniferous into a dozen other known 
species, one with a seven inch spread, and 
culminating in the Jurassic and onward, with 
those many kinds of monstrous winged crea- 
tures. Pterosaurs or flying lizards — some of 
them extending their wings twenty-five feet 
from tip to tip, and well-nigh darkening the 
face of the sky — followed at length or accom- 
panied by the true bird with feathers — the 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 29 

archaeopteryx, also of the Jurassic, and by 
numerous species in the Cretaceous. ^^ 

But still another mark of this wonderful era 
were the great monsters of sea and land — 
D^''3ri — the '' stretched out " creatures. A sin- 
gular description; and a marvellous fulfil- 
'xient does science record. Huge reptiles and 
amphibians, in vast variety. The world of- 
fers, at the present time, of living species, not 
more than six species fifteen feet in length, 
the largest of them not longer than twenty- 
five ; but then, from the Carboniferous through 
the Cretaceous periods, not less than one hun- 
dred and seventy-five known species, rang- 
ing from twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, to eighty 
feet in length, and one — the titanosaur of the 
Jurassic — a hundred feet in length and at 
least thirty feet in height, and possibly even 
this excelled by the atlantosaurus.'^ How the 
earth must have groaned with the tread of 
these huge and multitudinous monsters, while 
the face of the sky was shadowed by the 
screaming pterosaurs, and the waters had 

23 Sixteen species discovered in 1871 and 1872 by Marsh 
in New Jersey and Kansas, two of them of gigantic size. 
Sir John Lubbock, in 1881, adheres to the belief that 
"some of the footsteps on the [earlier] Triassic rocks are 
those of birds." "Inaugural Address to the British As- 
sociation," Sept. 27, 1881. 

24 Sir J. Lubbock, "Inaugural Address," Sept. 1881. 



30 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

long teemed with marine life. Could three 
short, bold sketches of the pen more admira- 
bly characterize the grand obvious features 
of the ages from the Cambrian to the Eocene? 
And now the sixth day, like the third, has 
its double achievement. First came '' the 
cattle, beast of the earth and creeping thing " 
— the popular description of the domestic ani- 
mals, the larger wild beasts, and the great 
indefinite multitude of smaller creatures, pict- 
uresquely described as "creeping" or moving 
over this great globe. Why need I dwell on 
that magnificent fauna which followed the 
abrupt disappearance of the great reptiles 
and amphibians and marked the period of 
the Eocene and onward, as the well-known 
'^ age of mammals.'' It would be a thrice-told 
tale to enumerate the wonderful exhibition 
of the Meiocene, for example, beside which 
the whole fauna of modern India "pales in 
comparison " ; for there we find seven species 
of elephants, five of rhinoceros, four of hippo- 
potamus, three of the horse tribe, the terrible 
deinotherium and their associates, — although 
it is only close upon the time of man's ap- 
pearing that we find his faithful companions, 
the sheep, the ox, the goat and the dog. The 
characterization of the period from the reptil- 
ian to the human is striking and admirable. 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 31 

And at the close of all, — according to both 
the records, — comes man himself, and, ac- 
cording to both alike, he came to ''have do- 
minion" over the beast of the earth, the fish 
of the sea, and the fowl of the air. In other 
words, from his first discovered and rudest 
vestiges, at the remotest periods, wherever 
w^e meet him, he is a man, with a capacious 
skull and a stalwart form, with weapons and 
implements, the hunter of the reindeer, mam- 
moth, musk-sheep and woolly rhinoceros, and 
elsewhere, and perhaps later, buried in his 
skin-robe with ornaments of shells and per- 
forated teeth, with his red w^ar paint,^^ and 
use of fire, and, while living side by side with 
the mammoth, carving on a plate of ivory 
the likeness of his huge contemporary; — a 
man with all the essential qualities of a man, 
though far away from the radiating point of 
the race — and no doubt degraded by the far- 
off* wanderings. 

Xow, in glancing back over these two rec- 
ords, in the book and in the rocks, which I 
have thus summarily sketched, one may well 

25 So thinks Dawson. ^'Nature and the Bible," p. 164. 
It was red oxide of iron. This occupant of the cave of 
Mentone was the contemporary of the cave-bear, and re- 
garded by Lyell as "palaeolithic," — although others ex- 
press doubt, chiefly, it would seem, because of the progress 
indicated. 



32 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

ask how it was possible with a few grand 
pictorial strokes so distinctly, so vividly and 
so intelligibly through all time, for the book 
to have delineated, ages ago, in consecutive 
order, the great procession of Nature from her 
inception to her consummation. How we are 
constrained to come at length, and to lay be- 
side this early coherent narrative the scattered 
discoveries and deductions of a great multitude 
of acute and exploring minds, and to bring 
their discoveries and deductions into coherence 
along the unbroken line of the ancient outline 
sketch. And it is of no account if some minor 
or exceptional detail is not reported. There 
IS no room nor reason for such things in our 
square-inch map. 

See, then, the sources of the history of this 
universe as they lie in a continuous series, 
confirmed by all the latest research in at least 
the following particulars: 

1. Nature and its parts had a beginning. 
So, certainly, science shows of all the parts; 
and in regard to the whole, it leads us up step 
by step by progressive approach and points 
us to the beginning of all. ''The whole course 
and tendency of Nature so far as science now 
makes out," says your Professor Young, ''points 
backward to a beginning." And he speaks not 
only for such men as Tait, Thompson, Clerk 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 33 

Maxwell, and Helinholtz, but in the name of 
reason herself. 

2. That all Nature is one great coherent sys- 
tem. On this point the latest science speaks 
in even more and more emphatic terms. 

3. That there was once a chaotic condition 
in which no life existed nor was possible. 

4. That the fitting up of this world was a 
progressive work. 

5. That light was antecedent to and inde- 
pendent of the sun's performing its function 
for the earth. 

6. That the earth was once sheeted with an 
envelope of waters, '' nearly or quite univer- 
sal," and the heavens with vapors. 

7. That there came a time when continents 
and seas began to form. 

8. That vegetation next appeared anterior 
to animal life, 

9. That only at an advanced period in the 
earth's progress did the heavenly bodies per- 
form for it their present functions. 

10. That the early, if not earliest animal 
life, was an immense sea-life. 

11. That winged creatures follow, strikingly 
conspicuous. 

12. That an age of huge reptiles and am- 
phibians — sea and land monsters, — followed 
or accompanied. 



34 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

13. That after this came the great mamma- 
lian movement, as we call it. 

14. That man was the greatest and last 
step of the creative work. 

15. That he made his appearance with his 
peculiar and human faculties, lord and master 
of the animal world. 

To appreciate the marvellous character of 
this account, I need not lay beside it the 
fragmentary hints from Babylon, the absurd- 
ities of Hindoo, Egyptian, Chaldean cosmog- 
ony, or even the utterances of Hesiod. We 
may turn to classic antiquity in her bloom, 
and see the best she could say by an Augustan 
poet: 

**Once, sea and earth, and sky that covers all, 
One face of nature were in all the globe, 
Which men call chaos, rude and formless mass, — 
Nothing but inert weight; discordant seeds 
Of jarring things were all together heaped. 
No sun was yielding to the world his light. 
No growing moon renewed her youthful horns, 
Nor hung the earth in circumambient air, 
Balanced by its own weight; nor did the sea 
Stretch out its arms along the distant coasts. 
Where'er was earth, was also sea and air. 
Thus faithless was the earth, pathless the wave, 
And dark the air; its own fixed form belonged to none, 
Each thing resisted each; in every part 
Cold fought with hot, and moist with dry. 
And soft with hard, the heavy with the light." 



THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 35 

Much of all this, whether called poetry or 
not, it will be seen, is sheer nonsense. The 
sequel avoids the same confusion only by con- 
fining itself to an imaginative picture of the 
earth's surface and surroundings — including 
however an actual division of sky and earth 
into five zones, — closing indeed with man the 
'* ruler of the rest." Yet man's history is in 
doubt, — 

* * whether from seed divine 
Formed by the maker of a better world, 
Or the new earth just severed from the sky 
Retained some seed of kindred heaven, which, 
Mix'd with water from the stream, Prometheus 
Formed to the likeness of the mighty gods." 

And yet before this shallow account of what 
is called the origin of the world saw the light, 
there had been for nigh fifty years beyond the 
Tiber, within a mile of the palace where Ovid 
waited on Augustus, a colony of captives in 
whose homes undoubtedly there lay copies of 
the Hebrew manuscript which more than a 
thousand years had been proclaiming to men 
the short, clear, simple story of the order of the 
creation — the great primal source of history. 



LECTURE SECOND. 



EAKLY MAN. 



It will be observed that nothing in the first 
chapter of the Pentateuch is decisive for or 
ao-ainst the theory of evolution. No utter- 
ance therein contained informs us whether 
the production of all these various occupants 
of the earth and seas was a direct or mediate 
process. If there is a statement conflicting 
with the evolution theory in its extent, it is 
to be found rather in the second chapter, at 
the creation of woman. AVe need not be pre- 
cipitate in dealing with the subject. The 
scientific objections to the theory, in its ex- 
treme form, have always seemed to me even 
more insuperable than the scriptural ones. 
It is not necessary to have spent one's life in 
collecting or exploring all the facts of natural 
history to understand the force of the reason- 
ing employed upon these facts. It is com- 
petent for any clear-headed thinker to say 
w^hether that reasoning is sound or unsound. 



EARLY MAN. 37 

One can readily admit what has long been 
known, the fact of very great varieties exist- 
ing in any species — varieties often suddenly 
produced and yet permanent, as in the otter 
breed of sheep and the Niata cattle. But 
they are, so far as has yet been shown, how- 
ever great their deviation, kept within such 
limits as not altogether to lose their normal 
character. Perhaps no greater range of vari- 
ation is found than in the hundred and fifty 
races of dogs, more or less, from Spitz and poo- 
dle to bull-dog, St Bernard and Newfoundland. 
Yet in quality and character, however devious 
in detail, they are evermore unmistakably dogs. 
The theory of a gradual evolution requires 
an infinity of time which astronomers find 
themselves less and less able to grant, while 
its common accompaniment of natural selec- 
tion as the sufficient explanation has been 
often shown to be, in Mivart's w^ords, ''a 
puerile hypothesis" and encounters the ob- 
stinate facts of species like the globigerina 
and the terebratula caput serpentis remaining 
unchanged from the Cretaceous to the present 
time, and the lingula even from the Cambrian,^ 
together with the universal absence of the al- 
leged connecting links from genus to genus; 

1 St. George Mivart, ''Contemporary Review," 1880, p. 
37. Am. Reprint. 



38 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

as it encounters, on the other hand, the 
startling abruptness of the entrance of many 
a new and multitudinous species, not ac- 
counted for by any supposed loss of inter- 
mediate strata, as in the unbroken geological 
transition from the Silurian to the Devonian, 
and from the Cretaceous to the Tertiary; and 
the theory of evolution per saltiim also fails of 
showing a connecting relation and scarcely 
differs from a direct creation; while considered 
merely as natural unfoldings, both alike break 
down before the moral nature — the reason and 
will — which forms the huge hiatus, the im- 
passable gulf, between the animals in their 
highest estate and man in his lowest. While 
we may patiently and candidly examine all 
evidence, nothing can well be more futile, it 
seems to me, than what Mr. Huxley w^as 
pleased to call a ^' demonstrative evidence,"^ 
drawn from finding some six entirely distinct 
species of the horse tribe extending from the 
Orohippus of the Eocene — about the size of 
a fox, — to the modern horse, by assuming 
from certain similarities, particularly of tiie 
hoof, attended with very considerable diff'er- 
ences, that the one certainly sprang from the 
other. The transition process is precisely 
what remains to be proved. It is like the 

2 Lecture in New York. Sept. 22, 1876. 



EARLY MAN. 39 

case of finding a half-dime, a dime, a double 
dime, a quarter, a half-dollar and a dollar 
with even an identity of composition and 
great similarity of external formation, and 
declaring that therefore the dollar is '' de- 
monstrated " to have been evolved from the 
half-dime. 

If ever the theory can be fairly shown to be 
a fact, we will cheerfully accept it, and adjust 
our difficulties to it — none of which however 
appear in the first chapter of Genesis. Let us 
be careful not to resist evidence. But thus 
far, *'not proven " must clearly be the verdict. 

Meanwhile we have in the Pentateuch a 
connected, though greatly abridged, account 
of the condition and institutions of primeval 
and primitive man, long the sole knowledge, 
but now beginning to be supplemented and 
confirmed by fragmentary disclosures of ar- 
chaeology. Let us look at this narrative and 
its confirmations. 

(1.) What was the locality of his earliest hab- 
itation ? Our narrative presents us with a first 
and a second point of departure for the human 
race — the second substantially the same witli 
the first. What was that? No doubt inde- 
finite confusion has been thrown over this 
question, in some cases perhaps not unwil- 
lingly. A class of writers have been more 



40 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

than ready to convert this, with all its sur- 
roundings, into a myth. And so the place has 
been made impossible by thrusting in among 
the rivers, the Nile and the Ganges or Indus, 
and among the countries, Ethiopia and India. 
One Christian writer would help out the con- 
fusion by adding to the Nile and the Ganges 
the fabulous " ocean-river" of the Greek class- 
ics as their common bond. For the Pishon no 
less than seventeen streams or bodies of water 
have been suggested, and for the Gihon not 
less than eighteen. Among them thus far we 
do not find included the Mississippi or the Am- 
azon, — although we do find the Jordan and 
the Danube. Some would escape the whole 
difficulty by affirming a probable transforma- 
tion of the earth's surface at the Deluge; while 
others simply affirm it to be an insoluble ques- 
tion. It must be handled cautiously. 

Still it must be seen that the Biblical ac- 
count of the Garden of Eden has all the traits 
of an exact geographical description, endea- 
voring to set forth the place by recognizable 
facts — the general region, the rivers that pro- 
ceeded from that region, the countries they wa- 
tered, and the productions of those countries, 
even to the particular quality of the gold there 
found, that it is ''good." Now the first of 
these rivers is unquestionably the Euphrates, 



EARLY MAN. » 41 

and tlie region of its rise is a well known and 
settled fact. The second, the Tigris, is almost 
equally beyond question, and its chief sources 
are within a few miles of the Euphrates — 2000 
paces, says Delitzsch (Comment in loco). The 
general region is thus somewhat definitely and 
positively settled; and here are the two great- 
est rivers of the country. Now midway be- 
tween two principal sources of the Euphrates, 
ten miles from each, rises the third great river 
of the region, the modern Araxes, called by 
the Persians, Jichoon-ar-Ras, which Reland, 
Rosenmiiller, Von Raumer, Kurtz — (and De- 
litzsch doubtfully^) with good reason iden- 
tify with the Gihon. The old difficulty — that 
this river encompasses the land of Cush and 
that Cush must be Ethiopia, — has passed aw^ay. 
Modern research has found an ancient Cushite 
race in this very region. Gesenius was obliged 
unwillingly to extend Cush from Ethiopia into 
Arabia, and Robinson to make it the immense 
region reaching from "Assyria on the N. E. 
through Eastern Arabia into Africa" Raw- 
linson at length^ showed a remarkable connec- 

3 He says of the theory which would include the Phasis, 
the Araxes or Oxus, among the rivers, and identify Havilah 
with Colchis, '*It is a possibility which Kurtz and Bunsen 
rightly regard as relatively the most admissible "—al- 
though he finally surrenders the question as insoluble. 

4 Kawlinson, "Herodotus," i. 353. 



42 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

tioii between the Cushites of Ethiopia and the 
early inhabitants of Babylonia; Lenormant 
accepts it as a "proved" fact^ tliat there was 
a race of Cushites on the lower Euphrates and 
Tigris, Kushites of Babylon, before the Chal- 
dean occupants; and Maspero^ lays it down as 
settled that three principle Cushite peoples 
established themselves around the Persian 
Gulf. The first, called Cossa^ans or Kisseans, 
by classic authors, settled on the mountain 
region that extends to the east of the Tigris ; 
the second spread along the lower Tigris and 
Euphrates; the third occupied the southern re- 
gions of the Persian Gulf, which it left for the 
coast of the Mediterranean."^ The first of these 
would occupy the land compassed by the Gihon 
or Araxes, and there remains but the fourth 

5 *' Chaldean Magic," pp. 337-347. 

6 "Histoire Ancienne," p. 147. 

7 Dr. A. Wieseler (Zeitschriffc fiir Kirklische Wissen- 
schaft, 1882, p. 3) finds Gush in the highlands of the Cau- 
casus north of the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris. 
'Tor this use of the term I have adduced two grounds; (1) 
that the Kas in Caucasus, which corresponds to Cush, 
(comp. also the mountains of Casius) etymologically among 
the Scythians according to Pliny ("Nat. Hist." vi. 17j 
and Bopp in J. Grimm, ("Hist, of the Ger. Lang." p. 
234,) signifies a rocky mountain; and (2) that the Indian 
Caucasus is still called Hindu-Cush. So the clearer and 
obscurer expressions, Kash and Kush are interchanged 
with each other, a fact which can be confirmed by those 
Indoscythian legends." 



EARLY MAN. 43 

great river to find. Many have made that 
fourth river Pishon, the old Phasis, now Eion, 
which flows from the Caucasus into the eastern 
end of the Black Sea. But perhaps more prob- 
able (though lacking any traceable connection 
of name) is the far larger and nearer stream 
the Kizil Irmak, or ancient Halys, the southern 
sources of which are on the western slope of 
the Karabel mountains, that separate the 
springs of the river from those of the Eu- 
phrates, at a spot seventy miles E. N. E. from 
Sivas.^ Now, as Eeland long ago showed, 
(followed by Eosenmiiller,) the Hebrew " Hav- 

8 Chesney's "Euphrates and Tigris," i. 3. It should be 
added that nearly all who advocate the situation of Eden 
in Armenia fix upon the Phasis for the Pison, with a simi- 
larity of name indeed, but with great difficulties in regard 
to the smaller size and far greater distance of the stream. 
The transfer of a name in the lapse of ages is no impossible 
thing, as is seen in the name of the wilderness of Paran, 
which now seems to survive only in Wady Feiran at a very 
considerable distance from the wilderness which it once 
designated. Were it not for the remoteness and smaller 
size of the Phasis, this would have, in the similarity of the 
name, a claim to be considered the Pison which no other 
stream presents. In failing to find such a resemblance in 
the Halys or Kizil Irmak, which makes the doubtful point, 
one encounters only the same difficulty in regard to name 
which besets all the other suppositions, while the/ac/ cor- 
responds. So far as I am aware, Col. Chesney was the first 
to suggest the Halys instead of the Phasis. It is the prac- 
tical suggestion of a skilful British engineer who had ex- 



44 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

ilah" is, in its consonant elements, slightly 
transposed, the same as Colchis — the latter 
having the Greek termination added. Colchis 
lay at the eastern end of the Black Sea, ex- 
tending somewhat indefinitely toward the 
south. It was the land of " the golden fleece " 
and, according to Strabo (I. 45) had great 
riches of ^' gold and silver." If we might (with 
Onkelos, the Jerusalem Targum, the LXX., the 
Vulgate, Fiirst and others) identify the Hebrew 
shoham with the emerald or green beryl, and 
what is perhaps more doubtful (though main- 
tained by the later Rabbins, by Bochart and 
Furst) the '' bdellium " [n^'lli] with the pearl, 
the case would be still stronger, inasmuch as 
Pliny, Solinus and Diodorus Siculus declare 
that the emerald abounded in that region and 
the pearl fishery is mentioned in the Periplus 
as existing on the coast of Colchis/ Round 
this region on the south flows the Kizil Irmak, 
till after a course of seven hundred miles it en- 
ters the Black Sea. In this region ancient sil- 
ver mines are known to exist for a distance of 
two hundred miles, from Madeh to Yuzgat 
and perhaps Divrigi. And though in the un- 

plored the general region in two snccessive expeditions, and 
has therefore some great advantages over the speculations 
of men who have never visited the country. 
9 lb. i. 279, 280. 



EARLY MAN. 45 

explored condition of the country now it is not 
easy to fix upon any considerable traces of the 
more precious metal, yet its existence in that 
region is indicated alike by early fable, ancient 
historians, and modern testimony.'' 

In this great plateau of Armenia, within a 
radius of some ninety miles, there thus rise 
the four great rivers of the w^hole region, flow- 
ing respectively to the north-east, the east, 
the south and the south-east, 1600, 1150, 1000 
and 700 miles, all springing from the various 
rivulets which form the water-supply, ''the 
river-system " (Kurtz), the system of water- 
courses, the collective nnj of the region.^' 

10 Ih. pp. 276-9. Most of the speculations of modern 
German scholars on the locality of Havilah are made val- 
ueless for the sober expositor by their assumption that this 
narrative is a saga, and that Havilah may be sought at 
random in India or elsewhere,— or as Friedrich Delitzsch 
puts it, in Utopia. This latter writer, in accordance with 
his theory, would find it in that part of the Syrian desert 
bordering on the Euphrates and extending from the Per- 
sian Gulf northward as far as Babylon. A part of the 
region, he says, is at present called Ard el-halat, or land 
of downs ( " Das Paradies," p. 59). It has commonly been 
asserted that this Havilah is necessarily identical with that 
of ch. X. 7, 29, XXV. 18, 1 Sam. xv. 7, 1 Chron. i. 9. For 
reasons to the contrary, see "Keil's Commentary" in loco. 

11 For the use of this word (in the plural) to designate 
waters (translated "floods") see Jonah ii. 3, Ps. xxiv. 2. 
The Hebrew had no such combination as "river-system." 
Thus Wetstein in Delitsch's Genesis, (and after him Fried- 



46 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

We may not give special weight to the 
fond tradition, still cherished in the valleys 
of Central Armenia, that Eden extended from 
the northern part of the pashalik of Mosul to 
a point not far north of Erzeroom, to Tocat 
in the west and somewhat beyond lake Van 
in the east;^^ nor to the tradition, still living 
at Harpoot, that paradise was on the adjacent 
plain ;^^ nor to the name Paradise-mountain 
(Edenis-Mta) that still lingers on a lofty peak 
in the Caucasus above the sources of the Rion/* 
But in all the learned confusion that has been 
cast over this subject, we can at least say that 
it is possible to find a local habitation for the 
Scripture site, somewhat clearly, by two cer- 
tain landmarks — the sources of the Tigris and 
Euphrates — with a reasonable conformity to 
the description in other respects, in a tract 
of country (the highlands of Armenia) which, 
in the words of Col. Chesney, confirmed by him 

rich Delitzsch) dwells on the necessary oriental notion of 
watering a garden, that it was by a multitude of little rills, 
countless little streams running in every direction. In- 
deed any other conception of the formation of four great 
rivers from the same "iH^ in a hilly region such as that 

where the Tigris and Euphrates originate is out of 
question. 

12 Chesney, i. p. 267. 

13 H. N. Wheeler, "Letters from Eden," pp. 15, 16. 

14 Freshfield, " Central Caucasus, " p. 277. 



EARLY MAN. 47 

in detail, "owing to the variety of its surface, 
climate and temperature, is adapted for the 
growth of ahiiost every tree that is pleasant 
to the sight or good for food."^^ And what- 
ever difficulties of detail mav attend this lo- 
cation fixed upon by Reland, Rosenm'uller, 
Kurtz, Bunsen and others, it has a tangible 
basis, avoids all " mythical " and self-contra- 
dictory elements, meets no insuperable objec- 
tions, and finds various confirmations. And 
somewhere in this region of Armenia eastward, 
perhaps on the southern slope of the Taurus, 
though some w^ould prefer a somewhat more 
southerly site, it certainly is not unscript- 
ural to find the home of our first parents, 
as well as (m this general region) of the se- 
cond set of progenitors of the race. ''The 
mention of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates," 
says Kurtz, "points to this [the highlands of 
Armenia] beyond the possibility of a doubt." 
And Friedrich Delitzsch who in his elabo- 
rate investigation would fix upon a region in 
Babylonia just north of Babylon, does so on 
the basis that " as to the Tigris and Euphrates 
no doubt is possible.''^® Others (Calvin, Bochart, 

15 Chesney's *« Euphrates and Tigris," i. 270. 

16 «'Wo lag das Paradies," p. 11. Friedrich Delitzsch 
effectually demolishes what he calls "Paradise in Utopia" 
— i. e., all those theories which introduce impossible com- 
binations (such as the Nile, Ganges, Indus), in a discussion 



48 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

etc.) would find it still farther south, below 
the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates. But 
whether higher or lower, all sober exposition 

of twenty pages. But when he reaches the ''Paradise in 
Armenia," he dispatches it in four pages, and with argu- 
ments of slender force, chiefly the difficulty of finding 
Cush and Havilah, and secondly of deriving the four 
streams from one. He shows, as others have done, that 
the South Babylonia Paradise is probably unsupportable, 
inasmuch as a very large part of the present delta has 
oeen formed even in historic times. His argument in be- 
half of his own theory is perhaps more ingenious than 
convincing. 

The difficulty, dwelt upon by Delitzsch and others, of 
one "river" dividing into these four great rivers, is geo- 
graphically and hydrostatically insuperable. It is how- 
ever easily solved if by "river" in the first instance we 
understand water-supply, river-system, streams collective- 
ly. Delitzsch would find the garden of Eden in Babylonia 
between the Euphrates and Tigris where they approach 
each other nearest. His view of the one river divided 
into four is that the Euphrates is the one, and that this, 
supplying a canal or arm (Pallikopas) which leads from 
the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, also the Shatt en-Nil, 
another branch which returns again into the Euphrates, 
and to some extent sending water through canals to the 
Tigris, meets the problem of the one and the four. One 
is compelled to feel that with all his German ingenuity 
and exhibition of learning, his argument labors in every 
direction, alike in his identification of streams, names, 
and to some degree countries and their productions— as 
when, e. gr., he would find the shoham in the cornelian. 
He has done good service in exploding the "Utopian" 
theory and in showing that the delta, so to call it, of the 
Euphrates is of more recent origin. 



EARLY MAN. 41) 

must fix upon the neighborhood of these streams 
— and according to the narrative, apparently 
toward their sources. 

Xow toward this region in general, Western 
Asia, or as some would say, Western Central 
Asia, various confirmatory indications point, 
for the cradle of the race. It must be ad- 
mitted that it is easier to find objections than 
proofs in reference to any definite place. But 
the general region along the Tigris and Eu- 
phrates is settled by the narrative. Here in 
the neighboring Caucasus is found the central 
and highest form of the human species; radi- 
ating from around the elevated central region 
of Asia, says Quatrefages, we find the three 
fundamental types of humanity, the black 
man, the yellow man and the white man.^' 
And Guyot has well shown how, as we recede 
from this general Asiatic centre in every direc- 
tion, the tendency is manifest towards a more 
or less complete deviation from the best perfec- 
tion of the human face and form ;^^ Brunton in 
the interests of ethnology would look towards 
the neighborhood of the mouth of the Eu- 
phrates ;^^ Friedrich Delitzsch for reasons partly 
geographical and largely speculative, to the re- 

17 "Natural History of Man," p. 51. 

w "The Earth and Man." 

19 **The Bible and Science," p. 363. 



50 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

gion around Babylon. So too, linguistic affini- 
ties lead us back toward this general region as 
the representative and radiating centre of the 
languages of the world. In reference to some 
of the languages, as, e. ^., the Aryan, the several 
lines of divergence towards the south-east, 
south, south-west, north-west and west are as 
distinct as the diverging lines of the ancient 
glaciers of North America. Towards western 
Asia — indeed towards this same region — point 
the great Semitic group ; and if in other cases 
the indications are less defined they still com- 
port with such an original home. 

In western Asia seems to have been the 
original home of the domestic animals. Of 
thirty-five species of these that may be called 
cosmopolitan, — man's attendants, — not less 
than thirty-one appear to have been natives 
of Central Asia or Northern Africa.'^ So also 
of grains. The six-rowed barley of the Greeks, 
Romans, and Egyptians, and the Egyptian 
wheat, point to the great plains of Western 
Asia as the locality whence they came.-^ 
When in the Swiss lake-dwellings of the 
so-called Neolithic age we find two kinds 
of barley, three of wheat, and two of millet 
together with the pig, the goat and cattle, 

20 Southall's "Recent Origin of Man," p. 43. 

21 ** British Quarterly." 



EARLY MAN, 51 

these domestic animals and cultivated cereals 
make their first appearance en masse^ not 
one by one; implying that the villagers ar- 
rived with flocks and herds and seeds. Mean- 
while the earliest traceable inhabitants of 
Chaldea, the originators of the arrow-headed 
alphabet, though found on the plain, bear the 
name '' Accadian," which means mountaineers, 
and their alphabet itself, in the character of 
its signs, indicates as the original home of the 
writing a more northern region with a very 
different fauna and flora, where the lion and 
the other great carnivora of the feline race 
were unknown, while the bear and the wolf 
were common animals.-^ Among the earliest 
traces of man in Europe we find an oyster- 
shell from the Red Sea at Thayngen grotto 
near Schaflfhausen, and fragments of the neph- 
rite of Asia in a paleolithic cave at Chaleux, 
France, connecting them all with either an 
Asiatic origin or relationship. And it has 
been observed, in the same line, that when 
in Europe we reach the time of bronze im- 
plements, swords, axes, spear-heads, razors, 
knives, — these, however widely dispersed, by 
their unity of design and form indicate a 
community of origin. And from this gen- 
eral locality how easy to discern the historic 
22 Lenormant, "Chaldean Magic," p. 359. 



52 HISTORY m THE PENTATEUCH, 

track of the migrations of the tribes to their 
distant homes, and, in part, to account for 
their line of march towards the severals points 
of the compass. 

But in what condition was primeval man ? 
The Scripture represents him as once in a 
state of moral equilibrium, a friend of God. 
And here the traditions of the nations, with 
their golden age of innocence and happiness, 
re-echo the statement. It belonged to the 
Egyptians, Chinese, Hindoos, Greeks, Per- 
sians, Thibetians, and as Lenormant remarks, 
'' is found among all the nations of the Aryan 
or Japhetic races, belonging to them prior to 
their dispersion and being one of the points 
in which their traditions place them most 
expressly on a common basis with those of 
the Semitic races, with those that find ex- 
pression in Genesis." ^^ He calls it '' one of 
the universal traditions." But while innocent, 
the Scripture consistently supposed man in a 
state of moral immaturity and inexperience, 
involving the danger and the fact of the fall. 

In regard to early industrial condition, the 
claims of the scriptures are moderate. Some 
light employment among the trees that fur- 
nished his food was his earlier task, and his 
first clothing of the simplest kind, like the 
23 " Origines de I'Histoire, p. 58.*' 



EARLY MAN, 53 

grass or skin coverings of the rudest tribes at 
present, or the skin robe of the old man of 
Cromagnon. Here is no nonsense about the 
''rivers flowing with milk and with nectar," 
w^hile " honey dripped from the trees." He 
was to dress and keep the garden. His sons 
are found in the simplest modes of rural life, 
keeping flocks of the smaller animals, sheep 
and goats, and tilling the soil. The arts in 
their higher form came in only in the seventh 
generation, with Jabal, Jubal and Tubal Cain 
— of which more hereafter. Meanwhile notice 
the sobriety and consistency of the narrative. 
As to his intellectual condition there is an 
equally noteworthy consistency. It is sufli- 
ciently manifest that a human being, however 
mature in size and strength, entering on life 
without experience, would require some im- 
mediate and preternatural knowledge as a 
substitute for experience; otherwise he would 
be like the new-born infant in capacity to 
care for himself, and the day of his creation 
might easily have been the day of his dissolu- 
tion. His very faculty of sight would be 
misleading, and all his muscular powers un- 
manageable. While therefore the scripture 
consistently and necessarily ascribes to him a 
precocious intelligence and some linguistic 
development, as exhibited in fitly giving 



54 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

names to the animal world and in recogniz- 
ing the contrast of his own solitude, there is 
a clear intimation of his practical inexperience 
in his being directed hy Ids Creator to make 
the clothing of skins, and perhaps also in the 
absence of all surprise in Eve's listening to the 
speech of one in the form of a serpent. 

The scripture thus makes a fully consistent 
picture, — of one in the balance of the moral 
nature, with Augustine's ''posse peccare et 
posse non peccare," yet without the formed 
character which will make the security of the 
ransomed; and, intellectually, of one entirely 
destitute of the industrial arts and scientific 
attainments, but with a mental capacity full- 
grown. Nor is there in my judgment any- 
thing to discredit this Biblical account in the 
various researches in the history of the race, 
but the contrary. It has become customary 
enough to assume with Lubbock and others, 
as an axiom, that man started as a low savage, 
even if not an animal, vet little above the 
animals. That he actually started not indeed 
with the arts, but with a high capacity for 
their rapid development, may appear in the 
sequel. 

It is a singular process of reasoning to take 
the distant outcasts of the race, tribe's that 
wandered far away from the native home and 



EARLY MAN, 55 

haci been subjected to all the depressing and 
degrading influences attendant, and to insist 
that tliey are representatives of that native 
home. History shows that there is not only 
such a thing as progress, but such a thing 
as degradation. And modern researches are 
more and more pointing ns back to a centre 
of early light, intellectual and moral, and 
bringing to distinct recognition the fact that 
the greater the distance in space, if not in 
time, from the central seat, as a rule, the 
greater the depression. How unequal has 
the human race, in its highest attainments, 
shown itself, unless preserved by a superna- 
tural grace subduing its own innate seeds of 
corruption and destruction, to maintain its 
high attainments, and how certainly has come 
the descent and fall! The old empires all are 
startling illustrations. It remains to be shown, 
if it can be shown, that aside from the presence 
of a supernatural revelation and preserving 
influence, there is such a thing as "permanent 
progress of the human race. All historj^ 
thus far goes to indicate that if the human 
mind is an active thing it may also be a de- 
structive thing, and in the long run human 
depravity overtakes and overthrows human 
culture, and worries down human refinement. 
Every new expansion of archaeological in- 



56 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

qiiiry seems tending to give new emphasis 
to this solemn lesson of all history. 

It is one of the latest and growing theories 
of philologists to regard the old polytheisms 
of Egypt, Greece, and India as the corruptions 
of an older monotheism. And a great orient- 
alist informs us that the one thing which a 
a comparative study of religions places in the 
clearest light, is the inevitable decay to which 
religion is exposed.^* It has become one of the 
astounding revelations of modern times to see 
how far, far back of all consecutive history 
many of the arts and forms of civilization 
stand out before us, as it were full-grown. 
The great cities of Babylonia in ruins reveal a 
surprising early development. The stupen- 
dous works of Egypt burst upon us without 
a known history. Her whole sculpture is a 
decadence. We gaze upon the green diorite 
statue of Cephrenes (or Shafra), and we say it 
is certainly a portrait, — and how wonderfully 
superior to the formal statuary of later times. 
We gaze upon the still older wooden image 
of the village hded or sheikh, so wonderfully 
life-like, and we say here is something far 
better yet. And when we look upon the two 
older ones of Nefert and Ra-hotep from May- 

24 Max Muller, "Chips from a German Workshop.'* 
Preface xxii. 



EARLY MAN. 57 

doom, "the oldest statues in the world," we 
say these are the best of all. Equally re- 
markable that oldest picture in the world, of 
the pasturing geese from the tomb of Xefermat, 
as compared with later Egyptian paintings, 
so-called. 

So again we look at the early development 
of the Aryan races in comparative proximity 
to their early home, the Sanscrit speaking race, 
the Persians, and the Greeks, and we cannot 
fail to contrast their condition with that of 
their kindred, the long wandering Celtic and 
other tribes that were driven to the distant 
west. We witness the Caffre language appar- 
ently descending into the Hottentot, and that 
still further falling into the Bushman. We 
find men, e. g.^ the Tasmanians, living on an 
island without the knowledge of canoes that 
must have brought them thither.^^ Or take a 
still more remarkable and recent instance. In 
1866, Dr. W. A. Marten made a journey to 
flonan in China, on purpose to visit a Jewish 
colony, one of many supposed to have existed 
formerly in the empire. This at Honan has 
long been known to the Christian world, hav- 
ino; been discovered by Father Ricci m the 
17th century, and claiming to have entered 
China as early as the Dynasty of Han. Dr. 
25 Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," p. 450. 



58 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Marten found a remnant of 3000 to 4000 com- 
pletely demoralized and even unjudaized. A 
solitary stone marked the place of their syna- 
gogue, on which an inscription commemorat- 
ed its erection, about a. d. 1183. They had 
copies of the law and the prophets, of which 
no man was able to read one word. With a 
rabbi, the father of one of Dr. Marten's visitors, 
had perished, forty years before, the last vestige 
of acquaintance with the sacred tongue. They 
have no knowledge of their tribe pedigree, 
keep no register, and now never assemble in 
a congregation. They remember the names of 
the feasts of Tabernacles and of unleavened 
bread as practised by a former generation, and 
have lately abandoned circumcision. One of 
them had lately became a Buddhist priest, 
another had a heathen wife. The living gen- 
eration had pulled down their synagogue and 
sold its stones and timber to obtain relief for 
their bodily wants, and the large tablet that 
once adorned its entrance, bearing in gilded 
Chinese characters the name ^' Israel," now 
belongs to a Mohammedan mosque. The only 
distinctive mark that is left them is the cus- 
tom of picking the sinews out of the flesh they 
eat— commemorative of Jacob's conflict with 
the angel. ^^ 

26 '<The Chinese," pp. 295-7. Harpers, 1881. 



EARLY MAN, 59 

The Veddas of Ceylon, now savages of the 
most debased type, are degenerate descendants 
of the tribe who brought Aryan civilization to 
Hindustan. ''More than half their words," 
says Max MuUer, are corruptions of the Sans- 
crit; " they may possibly prove in language, if 
not in blood, the distant cousins of Plato, 
Goethe and Newton."'" 

Now, with such specific illustrations before 
us, and with our eyes upon the singular col- 
lapses of great nations, as in Egypt, Greece 
and Italy, where printing and especially Chris- 
tianity had not found their way, or the latter 
had lost its power, how can we for an instant 
maintain that savagism was necessarily the 
primitive, rather than derivative state of man. 
I anticipate that more and more the process 
of research may indicate that in fact it was 
not so, and that the standard of ancient hu- 
manity is no more to be sought in the caves 
of Neanderthal, Liege, Mentone, or Furfooz, 
than that of modern civilization in the Bush- 
man, the Australian, the Terra del Fuegian or 
the Sioux Indian. Physical degradation also 
accompanies the moral and intellectual.^® 

What now were the early institutions of 
man ? Here we may glory in our Pentateuch 

27 Geike's "Horns with the Bible," i. p. 1S5. 

28 On this subject see Argyll's "Primeval Man," p. 155 



60 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

The second chapter of Genesis has well been 
called the most momentous of records. In its 
announcement of man's early institutions — 
its provision for his fullest destiny — it shines 
out on this dark world like the flash of light 
through chaos. There is nothing like it. 
Two great institutions, founded upon his deep- 
est wants and nearest relationships, were to 
have been the guaranty of his well-being, and 
are now the hope of his future. 

The first was that of marriage and the fam- 
ily, as defined in that great original law of 
monogamy, which in its first perfect form was 
issued in paradise. Was there ever an utterance 
like it, except in the New Testament exempli- 
fication of it ? Woman taken from the side 
of man to indicate identity, intimacy, sym- 
pathy, dependence, to call for tenderness, 
shelter, protection — the two to be bound to- 
gether as one, in an indissoluble bond, above 
that which binds any and all other earthly 
relationships — ^' one flesh," " bone of my bone 
and flesh of my flesh." Herein lies the cradle 
of the home, and the empire of woman. When 
was ever such a picture drawn except in that 
same holy book — as when the apostle finds 
in the relation of Christ and his church, in 
the supreme self-sacrifice on the one hand 
and the profound love and devotion on the 



EARLY MAN. 61 

other, an unfolding of the symbol of marriage. 
It is a sublime, a divine, conception (Eph. v. 
25-33). How on the one hand do the true 
marriages that are *'made in heaven," and on 
the other the polygamies and the divorces 
that are made in hell, flash their sacred or 
their lurid light over the grandeur of God's 
primal institution for man. And it will be 
observed that when polygamy creeps into 
history, it is first as the doing of the Cainite 
race, and, in the patriarchal line, as the off- 
spring either of a want of faith in God, or of 
fraud, and as the germ of family trouble. iVnd 
it is also to be observed how futile must be 
all attempts to raise or maintain the position 
of woman except on that divine and primeval 
basis. All history shows that the race was 
made for wedlock. It also shows that, whether 
in or out of wedlock, woman is and must be 
from her constitution the weaker and the 
dependent, and in a fight for ascendency the 
weaker must go to the wall. It shows, too, 
if it shows anything, how vain is the hope 
of a radical improvement of the human con- 
dition by external arrangements that leave 
the human spirit unchanged, full of its self- 
ishness, malignity and brutality. A swine in 
a garden is none the less a swine. And when 
we look upon the aw^ful separations and hor- 



62 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

rible relations that human sinfuhiess creates 
so continually between the nearest of relatives 
and friends, sown in guilt and reaped in crime, 
we are brought back to the obvious fact that 
the only adequate remedy for the wrongs of 
woman is a return to the divine ideal of the 
true relationship. No crusade of blind com- 
plaints and reproaches will eradicate the cause 
of complaint. No scramble for man's functions 
— whereby she becomes not masculine but man- 
nish — will make the woman content. No acts 
of legislation will carry happiness into a dis- 
cordant home, or protect the victim from the 
destroyer. But just so far as the great law 
of paradise is restored and realized, just so 
far will come — as has been coming — all needed 
outward reform, founded on the inner spirit 
that alone will make the law a life and a 
fact. All observation and all history lend 
their sanction to this divine original institu- 
tion. In the formation of the woman we find 
the greatest apparent scriptural obstacle to the 
theory of evolution. Mr. T. L. Brunton admits 
this to be so; ''If we are to take the words 
of the Bible as an accurate account of the crea- 
tion of woman, I do not see how we are to 
reconcile it with the doctrine of evolution." ^^ 
The details of the narrative at this point are 

29 Brunton's "Bible and Science," p. 353. 



EARLY MAN. 63 

SO brief and so obscure that it is easy for any 
man to ask questions that no man can answer. 
We cannot say with certainty that the y^V was 
a rib. The word elsewhere designates more 
nearly a side, as of a mountain, the tabernacle, 
an altar, the heavens, as a door, a side chamber, 
the side of a man; — perhaps in two passages 
(I Kings vi. 15-16; vii. 3) the beams of a build- 
ing, in no case clearly the human rib. But 
if not this, what then ? Was it some portion 
of the frame originally added for the purpose 
of being removed ? We can only say that it 
was one of similar portions remaining, (nv^V 
plural.) Some^" have gone so far as to accept 
the theory of the Talmud, the Targums and 
Maimonedes, of an original androgyous man, 
afterwards separated into man and woman — 
a construction which forces the narrative out 
of shape; for God took the y^V and '-'-made it 
into a woman." If we understand this to be 
in all respects a literal and objective state- 
ment, we still have, remarkably sustained 
from the first, the law that now prevails 
through all life — that, as Huxley would say, 
the living protoplasm comes from living pro- 
toplean — life from previous life, the woman 
comes from the man. 

Nor can we with Brunton call this ** a par- 
se Lenormant, apparently, *'Origines/' p. 58. 



64 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

able." For the account bears as fully the as- 
pect of a narrative as any other portion of 
the Pentateuch, and to admit such a deviation 
would throw us upon an ocean of uncertainties. 
Delitzsch^^ approaches nearer an admissible 
hypothesis when he intimates that it may be 
a *^ symbolical " narrative. 

But there is perhaps a possible solution for 
those who seek it, growing out of the recorded 
fact that the man was cast into a *' deep sleep" 
(nOTnri') before the formation of the woman. 
And we may possibly compare the similar 
state of nmnri in the fifteenth chapter of Gen- 
sis (v. 12), in which Abram received the com- 
munications of God, and apparently had the 
vision of the pillar of smoke and flame pass- 
ing between the divided victims and symbol- 
izing the covenant of God with him. It may 
be thought possible to understand that Adam's 
sleep in like manner continued and the follow- 
ing transaction was the vision in that sleep 
whereby God signified to him the indissoluble 
union with the wife. But even in this case 
there remains the fact asserted not only here, 
but in 1 Tim. ii. 13, that *'Adam was first 
formed, then Eve." And in accepting the fact 
we accept no greater difficulty than the evo- 
lutionist here encounters, nor so great; for in 
31 "0. T. His." p. 23. 



EARLY MAN. 65 

God's agency, deliberately establishing the re- 
lations of the sexes, we have an intelligent 
plan and cause, and a rational end in view, 
from the beginning; whereas that great un- 
changed, perpetual and substantially equal 
relation of sex that runs through not only 
the human race but all the countless races of 
the earth, is one of the problems before which 
any theory of evolution that excludes a grand 
preliminary plan and a mighty governing 
power, only betrays its helplessness and 
puerility. It is one of the insoluble pro- 
blems for any form of development hypoth- 
esis that excludes the final cause and the 
First Cause. 

The other signal institution of primeval man, 
which met him apparently at his origin, was 
that institution which lies at the foundation 
of all outer worship of God and all organized 
beneficence towards man, the bulwark of so- 
ciety, the supplement of the home, the univer- 
sal refiner and civilizer, the guaranty of social 
order and friendly relationship, the institution 
whereby all other human iijstitutions are pre- 
served and made eff*ective — the seventh sacred 
(lay. It is difficult to see any propriety in un- 
derstanding the narrative of its establishment 
as a prolepsis, or any cogency in the reasons 
rendered for thus forcing the narrative. It 



66 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

clearly is recorded as a part of the preparation 
of the world for man. Man's whole nature, 
physical, intellectual, social, moral and spir- 
itual, has been proved over and over to coin- 
cide with the Saviours declaration, ''the Sab- 
bath was made for man." The whole record 
is consistent with itself For besides the in- 
dications of the week usually recounted from 
the Pentateuch, as repeatedly occurring in the 
narrative of the flood, the time of circum- 
cision, the weeks or heptades of Jacob's court- 
ship, the seven days of Joseph's mourning, we 
find the complete or sacred number in God's 
assurance to Cain of a '' sevenfold vengeance," 
as well as in Lamech's "seventy-and-seven- 
fold," and even incorporated into the Hebrew 
language in the term iox swearing, which is to 
"seven oneself" It is hard even to believe 
that when Cain and Abel came with their sac- 
rifices, apparently at the same time, and that 
time ''the end of days," this end of days was 
other than the sacred seventh day. That the 
nations in their dispersion and moral deterio- 
ration should have lost the observance, as very 
likely had the Hebrews during the slavery of 
Egypt, was to have been expected. And yet 
there are indications enough of the wide dif- 
fusion of this hebdomadal division of time to 
connect themselves in a very striking way 



EARLY MAN. 67 

with the primeval appointment. Bunsen af- 
firms a seven days division for astrological 
purposes in China to be of proved antiquity ;" 
it was known to the ancestors of the Hindoos ;^^ 
and would seem to have been known in ancient 
Egypt, as well as a period of ten days. How 
extensively it can be traced among the nor- 
thern nations of Europe is a field for fur- 
ther inquiry. But at Athens the sections of 
Prytanes, apparently as early as the time of 
Cleisthenes, held office seven days at a time; 
and one of the very latest results of oriental 
research is the positive statement by Geo. 
Smith, Sayce and others, that from a very 
early period — before the migration of Abram — 
the Accadians of Babylonia and Chaldea had 
the seven-day week and the sacred Sabbath,^* 

32 "Egypt's Place in History," iii. p. 290. 

33 Dr. Burgess in "Bibliotheca Sacra," Oct. 1858. 

34 Mr. Ki chard A. Proctor, who has devoted a large 
amount of space, in his recent volume on the "Great 
Pyramid," to the advocacy of the theory that week origin- 
ated from halving the lunation and then halving that half, 
naively remarks, after his prolonged discussion, that "a 
more carefal study of her [the moon's] motions suggests 
the division of the lunar month into six periods of five 
days each rather than into four periods of seven days 
each." If he had said that not only a "careful study" 
but perpetual observation would sooner suggest the one 
first than the second, he would have been quite safe. See 
the *' Great Pyramid," p. 272. 



68 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

wherein no work should be done. The at- 
tempt to explain this wide-spread arrangement 
as a subdivision of a lunar month is not sus- 
tained by the planetary names given to the 
days; and meets the obvious difficulty that the 
week is not an aliquot part of a lunation — the 
latter being twenty-nine and a half days, of 
which by far the nearest proximate division 
would be the very close division of ten-day 
periods, which also prevailed in Egypt. "^^ 

And the institution of that form of worship 
which took the shape of sacrifice, after the 
fall, " at the end of days," stands singularly 
confirmed in its survival through all times and 
almost all races of the earth. So that it is of 
little moment whether we view it as a direct 
divine appointment or an instinctive impulse 
of the human soul; for the amazing tenacity 
with which it has clung to the race in all its 
wanderings, bears testimony to its inherent 
necessity to primeval fallen man, and confirms 
its early origin. 

The narrative of the first sin too, has not 
only a consistency that grows on the contem- 
plation, but offers the only solution of the dim 
traditions of the distant past. It has been not 
uncommon to question the fitness of the pro- 

35 Sayce, ''Chaldean Genesis," pp. 89, 308. George 
Smith, "Chaldean Discoveries," p. 12. 



EARLY MAN, G9 

Inbition as a test of obedience, as though out 
ofkeeping with the magnitude of the occasion. 
But a moment's reflection shows that not only 
could the principle of a genuine obedience be 
tested as well in that mode as any other, but, 
what is more important, that some such me- 
thod was the only one in keeping with the 
circumstances of the narrative, and further yet, 
the only method practicable in those simplest 
conditions of early life. All the complicated 
relations of advanced civilization and even of 
society were wanting. Here were two persons 
in a garden of nature. Fraud, theft, adultery, 
arson, robbery, were impossible, murder as 
yet inconceivable, all overt acts of cruelty, if 
not impossible, yet without a possible motive. 
What other form of test could or can well be 
devised thanjust such as that adopted, standing 
thus related to their actual life and condition. 
To a profounder reflection it carries on its face 
the stamp of verisimilitude, and those more 
striking devices which the objection would re- 
quire, would, in their inconsistency, brand the 
narrative as untrue. And while in some as- 
pects mystery must hang over any speculation 
on the modes of the first human sin, our nar- 
rative ofiers perhaps all the help that can be 
given when it traces the source of the seduc- 
tion to an outer influence, distinctly explained 



70 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

in the New Testament, ^^ as ''that old serpent 
which is called the devil and Satan," and when 
it couples with the persuasions of the appetite 
the specious inducement of a higher good — 
"ye shall be as gods" — and a pressure applied 
to the more emotional of the pair. And while 
the real agent is thus identified with Satan, I 
see — in accordance with a narrative which de- 
scribed all as it appeared — no fair mode of es- 
caping from the recognition of the actual ob- 
jective appearance of a serpent, chosen for the 
reason suggested in the narrative, the subtlety 
of the movement that comes and goes so 
stealthily and so unexpectedly, and the asso- 
ciation thereby awakened. The one grave ob- 
jection, that this is the concession of a mirac- 
ulous transaction for the purpose of deception, 
is perhaps sufficiently answered by saying 
that to them it was no miracle, — for there was 
no adequate knowledge of a settled course of 
nature, — but an ordinary phenomenon. 

I stand the more firmly by this view, from 
the striking confirmation which is found 
in the ancient and wide-spread traditions 
of the east, pointing definitely to precisely 
such a transaction. We not only find the 
sacred tree that gave immortality — the Indian 
Kalpanksham, the Persian Hom, the Arab 

36 Eev. xii. 9; xx. 2; John viii. 44. 



EARLY MAN. 71 

Tuba, the Greek Lotus, the tree in the coffin at 
Warka, and Babylon named ^'the place of the 
tree of life;"^" we also find the ruin of the 
race connected with the eating from a tree, 
in the Edda of the north, in the Zendavesta, 
and in the legend of Thibet, and a deceiver 
also appears, who is in some cases the ser- 
pent/^ Indeed the serpent figures largely in 
traditions, in Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Phenicia 
and elsewhere, as the enemy of the gods. 

The confirmation becomes more definite 
and singular still. We find not only a Baby- 
lonian cylinder of the 9th century b. c, show- 
ing the sacred tree with attendant figures and 
eagle-headed guardians, and another cylinder 
showing the sacred tree with *' attendant 
Cherubim ;" but we find another early Baby- 
lonian cylinder with sacred tree showing fruit, 
a seated human figure on each side, each with 
a hand extended towards it, and a serpent be- 
hind the one w4iose hand is nearest to the 
fruit ;^^ a vase from Cyprus of the 6th or 7th 
century b. c, (now in the Metropolitan Mu- 
seum of N. Y.) from the branches of which 
hang two large clusters of fruit, while a great 

37 Geike, ** Hours with the Bible," pp. 116-7. 

38 Ih. p. 119. 

39 Smith's ''Chaldaische Genesis," ed. Friedrich De- 
litzsch, pp. 98, 87. 



72 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

serpent approaches and prepares to seize one 
of them with his mouth; a famous sarcophagus 
in the CapitoUne Museum shows, near Titan, 
son of lapetus, who performs his work as 
moulder or designer, a man and woman 
standing nude at the foot of a tree from 
which the man makes the gesture of gath- 
ering the fruit; a bas-relief laid in the wall 
of the garden of Villa Albani at Rome pre- 
sents the same group, with a serpent twined 
around the trunk of the tree under the shade 
of which the two mortals stand/® All these are 
the distant echoes of the scripture record, 
drawing their significance from that simple 
story of which the same sacred volume offers 
also the solution. '' In all antiquity the ser- 
pent was the symbol of cunning, baseness 
and seduction/^ 

For the promise of the tempter was fulfilled 
like those of later tempters, 

"That palter with us in a double sense; 
That keep the word of promise to our ears, 
And break it to our hope." 

They did indeed *'know good and evil," the 
one as lost, and the other as fatally found. 
And thus, too, emerges the force and sym- 
bolism of the doom pronounced upon the real 

40 Lenormant, *'Origines," pp. 92-4. 

41 Tuch, *' Genesis," p. 84. 



EARLY MAN. 73 

tempter — for against him was it aimed. It 
involved no change in the animal, the reptile, 
whose change from an erect to a prone posi- 
tion and motion would have involved a 
change in every muscle, bone, process and 
organ of the body, — a re-creation, — but it 
was a curse in symbolic form. A serpent's 
form thou hast assumed, a serpent's doom and 
destiny shall be thine; thy career shall be that 
of a wretched crawler and dirt eater, inflict- 
ing with thy poison a dangerous, and possibly 
fatal, wound upon the woman's seed, but re- 
ceiving in turn a crushing blow from the seed 
of the woman, and especially from that chosen 
seed who Avas revealed ''that he might de- 
stroy the works of the devil," and who in 
token of that ascendency and dominion so 
often ejected Satan's agents from the demoni- 
acs of Palestine. 

Ejected now from that home of innocence 
and from the tree of life, that sacramental 
tree, — which like the sacred bread and wine 
could symbolize but not give immortal life, 
and of which the eating were now a profana- 
tion till man stands again by its side on the 
banks of the river of life, — he began his ex- 
perience of that threatened death of which 
all history bears witness, and of which the 
essential fact was never so well expressed as 



74 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

by Augustine when he said, ''death of the 
body is the separation of the body from the 
soul, but death of the soul is separation of the 
soul from God." For in this fruitful central 
germ is all sin and all resultant Avoe. Then 
and thus all the moral faculties work abnor- 
mally, falsely, and therefore, wretchedly. 

And so that death showed itself first in the 
sense of shame; then in the shrinking from 
God's presence ; then in crimination, the one 
of the other and of God; unfolding still further 
in the fearful utterance that announced all 
the pain, anxiety and woe that gather over 
woman's lot in connection with her offspring, 
and with the frequent tyranny of the husband 
taking the place of the normal and loving 
protection and dependence, and in the per- 
version of man's toil from its normal pleasant- 
ness to be a drudgery, wearing and uncertain 
in the process, and bitterly disappointing in 
its best earthly hopes and fruits, and ending 
in the physical decease which, though not the 
primary gravamen of the threatened death, is 
yet its sad and fitting symbol. And how 
soon all this horror for the man and the wo- 
man and the world culminated in the first 
fratricide. How the history of the murderer 
down through all time was delineated in that 
titanic and terrible figure, which represents 



EARLY MAN. 75 

the earth as opening her mouth to receive the 
blood of the victim and hurling back from 
that open mouth a curse upon the criminal. 
And in the remorse and terror that weighed 
him down and chased him through the land 
of '' wandering," haunted by the presence of 
God and the threatening spectral hand of man, 
and that made him build his fenced city or 
stronghold, like some mediaeval robber's cas- 
tle, we read by anticipation the vivid pictures 
of the masters of tragedy and romance, in 
some Macbeth or Sykes, or the facts of actual 
occurrence as in the Knapps and Crownin- 
shields of real life. Meanwhile in the trials 
and sorrows that h-ave embittered the social 
life of the race, in the burdens and anxieties 
that have poisoned their labor, in the crimes 
and woes that have filled the earth and as- 
sailed the heavens with their cries and groans, 
and in the thick and heavy clouds that have 
hung over human prospects further back than 
the dawnings of human history, we read the 
substantial verity of the sweeping curse pro- 
nounced upon the progenitors of our race — 
the ancient anathema travelling downward 
through the centuries, till it meets one who 
comes up ''alone with dyed garments," but 
*' travelling in the greatness of his strength, 
speaking in righteousness and mighty to save." 



LECTURE THIRD. 



THE EARLY ARTS. 



A NOTEWORTHY feature of our advanced civi- 
lization is the unconsciousness with which we 
inherit a vast mass of things — utensils, usages 
and methods — the discovery or invention of 
each one of which has been a great stride in 
human life and achievement. We justly glory 
over our modern inventions, many of which, 
such as photographic, electric, and steam ap- 
paratus, began in the application of the sim- 
plest principles, at first in a modest way, and 
which waited almost to our day for that first 
rude application. It is with profound surprise 
that we walk through some collection of an- 
cient relics, as in the museum at Naples, and 
see there anticipated so many things, such as 
dentist's implements and the like, which, we 
had supposed, belonged only to modern times; 
or, that in still more ancient collections, like 
that of the Boulak Museum in Cairo, we look 
upon a modern fish-hook, the children's dolls 



THE EARLY ARTS. 77 

and playthings, the paraphernalia of ladies' 
toilets, or the superb jewelry of an ancient 
queen. But far more remarkable are the 
commoner inheritances from the past, so iden- 
tified with our daily life that we never think 
of their origination. Yet those were bold men 
who first ventured upon many an article of 
our food, and to the last degree ingenious men 
who first devised a multitude of processes con- 
nected with its preparation. The grinding 
of grain, the use of leaven, and a thousand 
things connected with the sustenance of life, 
whence came they ? So with the commonest 
appliances; a nail, a screw, a pulley, a lamp, 
a pair of scissors, a chair, a table, a kettle, a 
chimney, the forging of metals, the making 
of glass, were in some sense grander inven- 
tions than the steam engine and its contem- 
poraries, because they enter so closely into 
all the daily round and comfort of living of 
all men. 

It is interesting to see how the oldest men- 
tion or implication of many of the great 
conveniences and processes of common life is 
found in the sacred record. And here the 
narrative is not only self-consistent, but is 
abundantly sustained by the remotest investi- 
gations of the latest time. 

The brevity of an ancient narrative often re- 



78 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

veals only by suggestion or implication. The 
first clear indication of primeval implements 
is to be found in the coats of skins. For, the 
sewing of the fig-leaves, as we gather from 
the use of the word "nsn and its equivalents 
i^sn and ??tp, was not necessarily more than 
tying them or making them in any way ad- 
here together. But the preparation of the 
skins involves, to say no more, the use of 
cutting instruments. And it is noticeable 
that here the suggestion is by implication 
ascribed to the Creator, in the statement that 
''the Lord God did make coats of skins and 
clothed them." Simple as is the flint knife — 
simplest of all effective instruments — the first 
invention of it /or the hour of need might well 
be ascribed to a God-given sagacity. And its 
invention may equally well be traced to the 
origin of the human race, inasmuch as all, 
even the rudest tribes of men in all ages, have 
been found in possession of sharp implements 
of flint or other hard stone. They occur no 
less among the relics of pateolithic races and 
Swiss lake-dwellers of Western Europe than 
among the North American Indians and their 
predecessors the mound-builders, and in the 
lowest stratum at Hissarlik, two unknown 
ages earlier than the Troy of Homer; and 
in Egypt deep below the ground in a well 



THE EARLY ARTS, 79 

near Cairo have been found flakes of flint 
evidently fashioned by the hand of man. 
With them enter the first faint traces of 
human presence on the face of the earth. 
The stone age has but recently passed away 
from among the Esquimaux, and it prevailed 
over the world till the inventions of the higher 
races have entered. The fact is suggestive, and 
might possibly be explained as the result of the 
same permanent necessities and constant inge- 
nuity, or more easily, when we see the same 
style of chipping away the flint all over the 
world, as the result of an earliest, common in- 
heritance. Thus there is, it is said, a noticeably 
close resemblance between the palasolithic 
implements in the post-glacial terraces of 
Trenton, X. J., and those of the gravel beds 
of northern France and southern England. 

But we are led to another still more remark- 
able inquiry, that concerning the early use 
of fire, as perhaps involved in the narrative. 
To say nothing of the tilling of the earth by 
Cain, even though perhaps not for the cereals 
but for roots and garden vegetables, as nat- 
urally if not necessarily supplemented by the 
use of fire, yet the sacrifice of Abel, "the first- 
lings of the flock and of their fat," involves, 
unless the ofi*ering stands isolated from all else 
of the kind in the Bible and the history of the 



80 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

nations, a consumption by fire. And it is 
noticeable that even in the previous narrative 
an apparently archaic word, properly designa- 
ting the ** licking " of fire occurs in the phrase 
'^the flame of a sword," ':r\r\r\ ^rh (Gen. iii. 24). 
The long-matured and skilful application of 
fire is of course involved in the forging pro- 
cesses of Tubal Cain at a later period, and the 
first distinct mention is found in connection 
with the burnt offerings of Noah. A mo- 
ment's reflection, while it shows the moment- 
ousness of the discovery, shows also the singular 
improbability of that discovery being made by 
any being however intelligent anterior to all 
Knowledge or conception of its uses, and much 
more the improbability that it should have be- 
come the common possession of all the remotest 
races, unless by some such community of in- 
heritance and therefore early origin. Yet no 
race on the earth has been found destitute of 
it, although it is asserted (by Lubbock and 
others) that some races have not the power to 
produce it. Lubbock, after referring to some 
three alleged exceptions, is constrained to say, 
**It cannot be satisfactorily proved that there 
is at present or has been in historical times any 
race of men entirely ignorant of fire. It is at 
least certain that as far back as the earliest 
Swiss lake-dwellings fire was well known in 



THE EARLY ARTS, 81 

Europe."^ This is not all. While it has been 
common to admit that in the so-called palaeo- 
lithic period of Europe, fire was probably 
known, but ''there is no evidence of it,"^ it 
seems that this last statement can hardly be 
made. Indeed a sharp distinction between 
palaeolithic and neolithic man is becoming for 
various reasons more difficult to maintain. It 
will hardly answer to draw the line on the 
ground of progress attained ; for that begs the 
question at issue.^ The palseontological test 
founded on the presence or disappearance of 
extinct animals seems on some accounts fairest. 

1 "Prehistoric Times,'* p. 560. 

2 Winchell, " Preadamite Man," p. 415. 

3 Archibald Geike, though earnestly maintaining a 
long lapse of time in Britain for the palaeolithic period 
(**Ice Age," p. 504) and a sharp dividing line between 
its relics and those of the neolithic age (p. 496), yet 
informs us in his later work ("Geology," 1882, p. 
903) that the nature or shape of the implement can- 
not be always a satisfactory proof of antiquity. ' ' We 
must judge of it by the circumstances under which it is 
found. The student may profitably consult Dr. Arthur 
Mitchell's Fast in the Present for the warnings it contains 
as to the danger of deciding upon the antiquity of an im- 
plement merely from its rudeness." And Dr. J. W. Daw- 
son remarks ("Origin of the World," 1877, p. 278) that 
' ' Wilson, Southall, and other writers have accumulated 
so many examples of this that I think the distinction of 
Palseohthic and Neolithic ages must now be given up by 
all investigators who possess ordinary judgment." 



82 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

This as proposed by Lartet makes (for France) 
the oldest period of the cave-men the time of 
the cave-bear, the next of the mammoth and 
woolly rhinoceros, then that of the reindeer, 
and last of the aurochs. Lubbock so far agrees 
as to make the earliest period that of the cave- 
bear, mammoth and rhinoceros.* But at Mas- 
sat ashes and charcoal were found not only in 
connection with the bones of the bear and 
other animals, but with a likeness of the 
cave-bear himself drawn upon a stone.^ So 
at Aurignac, which Lartet regards as *' reach- 
ing back to the highest antiquity of man," 
in conjunction with the bear, mammoth, and 
rhinoceros were found marks of fire.® It has 
been found in large quantities in the valley 
of Vezere,"^ which however may be later. Con- 
nect with these facts that ancient legend con- 
cerning Prometheus, which declares the great- 
ness of the boon, the source, and the strangeness 
of its procurement, and all these indications 
concur with the supposition of its communica- 
tion to the first family. In the same direction 
lies the statement of the Phenician cosmogony 

4 "Prehistoric Times," p. 2. 

5 Southall, "Recent Origin of Men," p. 208. Quatre- 
fages, "Human Species," p. 146. 

6 Lnbbock, Ih. p. 320. 

7 Quatrefages, "Human Species," p. 320, 145. 



THE EARLY ARTS. 83 

which reckons as descendants of Genos and 
Genea (Cain and Caina), three brothers, Light, 
Fire and Flame.^ 

In the same direction lies the brief an- 
nouncement concerning the occupations of 
Cain and Abel, the one a cultivator of the 
soil, the other a raiser of the small cattle, sheep 
and goats (r&<v). The two simplest of all oc- 
cupations, our narrative informs us, began 
thus early. It is in keeping with Living- 
stone's observation after his long experience 
among the African tribes,that it is out of the 
question for human beings to maintain life by 
dependence simply on the unaided products 
of nature. The origin of these employments 
lies beyond the verge of all other history. The 
Scripture account thoroughly accords with all 
we know of early life. The Swiss Lake-dwellers 
had their various grains and domestic animals. 
Several writers have endeavored to show that 
the men of the stone age in France and Suabia 
had their domestic animals, horses and rein- 
deer. It is, perhaps, an open question. But 
it would seem to be no question that agricul- 
ture and cattle breeding marked the earliest 
progress in Europe beyond the life of hunting 
and fishing. 

We would not venture far in speculating — 
8 Lenormant, "Les Origines," p. 20^. 



84 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

though almost compelled to raise the inquiiy 
— what utensils are necessarily supposed in 
this early keeping of goats, as always, for their 
milk. But we are reminded at once how an- 
cient and well-nigh universal has been some 
kind of pottery, however rude. It abundantly 
marks the sites of '' all ancient habitations," as 
w^ell as the chief resorts of the Indian tribes, the 
mound-builders' settlements, the Celtic towns, 
and the old Lake-dwellings.^ It was found 
in the valley of Massat with the remains of 
fire and of the cave-bear; at Nabrigas where 
the bear's skull-bone was pierced by an arrow, 
and at Vergisson in connection with four ex- 
tinct species of animals. 

Furthermore, we are told that Cain built a 
city. The word, by its origin and frequent 
early use, designates no more than an enclos- 
ure for defensive purposes, a Avail or ditch, 
either or both, surrounding a dwelling or clus- 
ter of dwellings. We may understand a rude 
structure far simpler and less elaborate than 
the mound-builders' strongholds on the Miami 
and in Northern Ohio, and in size at most a 
hamlet or encampment rather than a modern 
town. For we may remember that in early 
Judah there were one hundred and twenty- 
four "- cities," and in Canaan thirty-one royal 

9 Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times," p. 237. 



THE EARLY ARTS, 85 

'* cities," that even the city of David was orig- 
inally but a citadel on Zion. Homer s Troy, 
at least the fortified part, the city proper, ap- 
pears to have been but a hill fortress with an 
area scarcely two hundred feet by three hun- 
dred, not half so large as the fortified hill- 
top of the old Egyptian miners in Wady Ma- 
garah.^" The city {y^^ in Isaiah i. 8, is ap- 
parently but a watch-tower. We may therefore 
imagine simply an enbankment or stockade, 
within which the terror-stricken criminal en- 
deavored to quell his fears and secure his 
safety, as in later days the Pequot chief Sas- 
sacus retreated within his stronghold to shel- 
ter himself from the avenger of blood. 

The next clear indications of progress that 
occur in the sacred record, are found in a re- 
markable outburst in a singularly gifted family, 
LLimech and his sons, Jubal, Jabal and Tubal 
Cain. It occurs naturally enough after the 
lapse of some generations, and in the Cainite 
line, — the men of this world. The develop- 
ment is so surprising that some have en- 
deavored (like Buttmann) to remit it wholly 
into the region of myths, and to regard the 
three as gods, early w^orshipped by the He- 
brews ; others (as Ewald) would find three great 
classes into which the civilization of that age 

10 About 660 by 260 feet. 



86 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

was divided; and Lenormant would regard 
them as ethnic personifications of the great 
liuman races, Tubal standing for the Tibareni 
and the Chalybes. It is difficult to read such 
statements into the text. But the progress re- 
corded is very great; it follows in the line of 
him who founded the first city or permanent 
place of habitation, and is attended with 
circumstances of luxury, sensuality, boastful- 
ness and ferocity which give a striking air of 
verisimilitude to this brief opening into the 
oldest civilization of the human race. 

In the possession of Jabal we find tents 
and cattle, — these last no longer the smaller 
animals, the sheep and goats of Abel's time, 
but the larger cattle also, constituting together 
already, as in later times, a great oriental for- 
tune. The tents in which they dwelt to care 
for their flocks and herds set before us, as al- 
ready mature, no doubt, the art of spinning 
and weaving the goats'-hair cloth which from 
time immemorial has formed the black oriental 
tent, and, by natural inference, of converting 
the wool of the sheep into clothing. And the 
picture of life thus given would correspond in 
good measure to the life of Abraham and Isaac 
in after times, when they had their home in 
Palestine, rich in flocks and herds, with more 
or less settled places of abode, yet moving 



THE EARLY ARTS, 87 

about with facility as necessity or convenience 
might require. Historically the arts of spin- 
ning and weaving reach back beyond all oth- 
er records. The neolithic men of the Swiss 
lakes present us with cloth for clothing and 
nets for fishing. 

Jubal appears as the ancestor of those who 
handle the stringed and wind instruments. 
And it is remarkable how far back in antiquity 
we encounter musical instruments, and that 
too in great variety. We cannot find their 
origin, but they meet us in the full stream. 
The Assyrian sculptures, being mostly hunting 
and battle scenes, give us more meagre dis- 
closures, although we find the harp at their 
feasts, and when the king goes forth from Susa 
to receive his prisoners, he does it to the sound 
of the harp and the double pipe. But Egypt 
furnishes both the oldest and most abundant 
exhibition. *' Paintings on the tombs of the 
earliest times" ^^ exhibit their fondness for in- 
strumental music, which blossomed out into a 
singular variety of instruments. They had 
their drums, their tambourines of three kinds, 
clappers, cymbals and trumpets, flutes of reed, 
wood, bone and ivory, single pipes with three 
and with four holes, double pipes, and stringed 
instruments of much greater variety in forai 

11 Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," i. pp. 83, 126. 



88 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

and number of strings than are in modern use. 
There were guitars of two or three different 
shapes, lyres of diverse forms, standing and 
portable, harps of still greater variety, some 
of them in shape almost like the Irish harp, 
with thirteen different numbers of strings 
varying from four to twenty-two. Thus *' the 
harp and the organ," that is, the stringed and 
the wind instruments of music, antedate all 
other history than that of the Pentateuch. 

Among the far-off tribes of the Stone Age, 
as it is called, we find less of artistic turn in 
any form, and for reasons which I shall dwell 
upon more in the sequel. Bones pierced with 
holes for whistles are the sole representa- 
tives that we find of the musical tendency. 
The incipient artistic turn showed itself more 
in other forms — in the pictures of the cave- 
bear, of the reindeer, of two reindeers fighting, 
of a fish, of the mammoth ''etched upon his 
own ivory" so as to be perfectly recognizable, 
all of the earliest, rudest times. What other 
arts, implements, and habits of these times 
are indicated, whether rites of burial, relig- 
ious observances and the like — I will not dis- 
cuss, it not being essential to my purpose, 
and the facts as yet too uncertain. 

But at this point let me enter two impor- 
tant caveats, (1) that the non-discovery of 



THE EARLY ARTS. 89 

certain objects, especially in scattered caves, 
is no proof that they did not exist, and (2) 
that the condition of things in these remote 
places is no safe criterion even of the state 
of society from which they might haye been 
detached. Unsettled tribes, and even distant 
colonists, leave behind far more than they 
carry. 

Take a striking: instance. The Plymouth 
settlers in 1620 brought with them no means 
of fishing, neither seines nor hooks, and for 
eighteen months they suffered greatly for 
the want of them.^- For tliree or four years 
(till March 1623 or 1624) they had no cattle, 
and then but four were imported. In May 
1627, they had but one cow and two goats for 
each thirteen persons; and the first recorded 
introduction of sheep, five in number, was in 
1630. Horses must have been many years 
later. And most singular of all, though glass 
windows were introduced into England in 
1180, yet 460 years later Edward Winslow 
was writing to George Morton in England, 
''Bring paper and linseed oil for your win- 
dows."^' Oiled paper to keep out the cold ot* 
a New England winter I They brought with 
them, of course, almost no jewelry, no paintings 

12 Young's "Chronicles of the Pilgrims," p. 171. 

13 lb, p. 237. 



90 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

or works of art, no organ nor instruments of 
music — and the like. Now about the year 
1852 I happened to be in Plymouth, Mas- 
sachusetts, when in the construction of a 
drain or sewer some bones of those who died 
in the first year of the settlement were dug 
up. Suppose that the objects found with 
them, or that could have been found for 
many years afterwards, had been taken as 
a criterion of the state of the arts and the con- 
dition of society in England whence they 
had come so directly across the ocean — how 
illogical and false the inferences. 

The third of this family group, Tubal 
Cain, was " an instructor of every artificer 
in brass and iron," or as most modern schol- 
ars render it, substantially, a ''forger of all 
tools (or implements,) of brass and iron." 
Here we strike the origin of metallurgy, es- 
pecially the working of brass — or rather 
bronze or copper — and iron. The bronze or 
copper comes first in the order of mention, 
as it appears to have come first in the order 
of use. Indeed it is noteworthy that early 
researches bring us very little of pure copper; 
but the main supply of metallic implements 
is of bronze, a compound of copper and tin. 
Copper is comparatively fusible and malleable, 
and is found in combinations much more 



THE EARLY ARTS. 91 

manageable than iron, and is far more 
abundant in the region of Armenia and the 
neighboring countries. It is still a product of 
Armenia, being exported in large quantities, 
a characteristic product of Cyprus, to which 
it gives name, and is found in the region of 
Sinai. Almost as far back as we can trace 
anything, we can trace the mining of copper. 
In the neighborhood of the copper slag-heaps 
at Wady Magarah, is inscribed on the cliff 
the oldest known carved name of a monarch, 
Snefru of Egypt, who wrought these mines 
before the Great Pyramid was built. And 
the oldest description of the mining process 
is that graphic picture in the twenty-eighth 
chapter of Job — 

*' Surely there is a vein for silver 
And a place for gold where they fine it, 
Iron is taken out of the earth, 
And brass is molten out of the stone," etc. 

So early was copper and bronze forged in 
the East that we cannot discern the prelim- 
inary stages. In this country we can trace 
apparently the transitian period with the 
old mound builders. Until recently, copper 
was found in those ancient works only in 
its native state, as it had been brought from 
the mines of Lake Superior and shaped into 



92 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

hatchets or other forms by hammering, — the 
process being betrayed by the lamination. 
The art of fusing it was supposed not to 
have been attained. But we seem of late to 
have found the transition. For in Wiscon- 
sin there have lately been discovered certain 
copper implements (chisels) which are de- 
clared by practical founders to have been 
cast in a mould.^* This stage of transition 
has not been recognized in the old world 
— unless at Hissarlik. Schliemann found 
there in the two strata older than his Troy, 
pins of copper much harder than that of com- 
merce, which, it is conjectured, may owe its 
hardness to a natural alloy of rhodium, such 
as was ascertained to have caused a similar 
hardness in the weapons of the Peruvian 
Incas and in certain weapons discovered at 
Lake Superior.^^ In what he considers the 
Troy stratum the metal was bronze. The 
proportion of tin varied from four to nearly 
nine per cent. Bronze was one of the abun- 
dant alloys of ancient Cyprus. Bronzes are 
found at Babylon and Nineveh, in which the 
proportion of tin is ten and eleven per cent, 
but in a bell fourteen — indicating a skilful 
adjustment. So in the bronzes of Mycenae 

14 «* Historical Collections of Wisconsin," vol. vii., p. 101. 

15 Schliemann's **nios,"p. 251, 738. 



THE EARLY ARTS, 93 

a much larger proportion of tin occurs in the 
armor than in the domestic utensils, some of 
which are almost pure copper. Loftus found 
what he calls brass ornaments (more likely 
bronze) in the mounds of Erech (Warka), 
and at tell Sifr a singular variety and quan- 
tity of copper articles in a copper-smith's 
shop, where eren the dross from his castings 
indicated his forge near at hand. The date 
was pronounced by Sir Henry Rawlinson to 
be about 1500 b. c. Bronze abounds in 
Egypt from the earliest times, a cast cylin- 
der bearing the name of Pepi of the sixth dy- 
nasty. This would carry us still further back 
— according to Mariette 2200 years, accord- 
ing to Brugsch 1700, and according to Birch 
more than 500. In other words, however 
far back of the confines of all recorded history 
except this Pentateuch we go, we encounter 
bronze coming down from beyond in compar 
ative abundance as one of the very earliest 
forms of metallurgy, and in the very regions 
to which it is assigned, and where it is still 
to be found. But the tin with which it is al- 
loyed furnishes at the same time indications 
of an enterprise and traffic quite notewor- 
thy, inasmuch as the nearest known points of 
its production are Burmah in Asia, Bohemia, 
Sardinia, Siberia and Spain in Europe. Capt. 



94 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Burton however, is said to have found it in 
Midian. 

Of iron, too, Tubal Cain was the forger. 
Here again is a congruity to known circum- 
stances. Iron is one of the metals of Armenia. 
There are mines of it in Kurdistan, — the 
mountains of Tyari, and the valley of Ber- 
wari. But its use among the nations gener- 
ally was later and scantier than that of copper 
and bronze. There is no trace of it in pre- 
historic Troy and Mycenae; nor in Cyprus. 
Among the Accadians it is said to have been 
a precious metal. Og, king of Bashan, had 
his bed of iron. It was the latest metal of 
prehistoric man in Europe. Only in the re- 
gion of Asia referred to does it appear early 
to any extent. At Nimroud in one room 
Layard found scale armor of iron, almost de- 
composed with rust, but enough left to fill 
two or three baskets. A perfect helmet was 
also found, and other armor of iron and of 
copper, and iron inlaid with copper, — helmets 
of various shapes, that fell to pieces as soon 
as exposed. He also found iron swords, dag- 
gers, shields, spear and arrow heads, the head 
of a hatchet, and specimens of bronze cast 
over iron. These bring us nearest in place if 
not in time to Tubal Cain. For except in one 
case, neither iron nor steel is actually met wath 



THE EARLY ARTS. 95 

among the antiquities of Egypt; although 
steel is thought to be clearly delineated in the 
pictures. That one exception is quite remark- 
able. It was communicated to me by Dr. 
Grant Bey of Cairo, first orally, then in writ- 
ing, as follows: '^n 1837 Mr. Hill, in the 
employ of Col. Vyse, discovered a fragment 
of iron in an inner point near the mouth of 
the southern air channel of the great pyramid. 
It was sent to the British ]\Iuseum wath three 
certificates signed by Hill, Perring, Andrews 
and Mash, to the effect that the iron had been 
left in the point between two stones during 
the building of the pyramid, and could not 
have been inserted afterward. Col. Vyse 
also thought he perceived the remains of an 
iron fastening in the chamber containing 
the sideboard^® in the great temple of Abou 
Simbel." 

But this remarkable family had other ac- 
complishments. For from the mouth of La- 
mech we hear the earliest poetry in the world's 
history, the triple Semitic distich in which he 

16 Mr. Birch, in the last edition of Wilkinson, mentions 
a few other small objects of iron, of which the age is more 
undefined: a falchion blade tinder a sphinx at Kamac, the 
blade of an adze, and iron wires sustaining the core of a 
broken bronze statue — the latter of the age of the Kames- 
sids. (YoL ii. p. 251.) 



96 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

commemorates his murderous exploit and his 
ferocious spirit to his two wives. 

** Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, 
Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech: 
For I have slain a man for my wound, 
And a young man for my hurt: 
If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, 
Truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold." 

It has been conjectured by many to have 
been prompted by his son's invention of me- 
tallic weapons; and as it was a sword-song, so 
was it a blood-song, an utterance of *' titanic 
insolence " and ferocity. It well illustrates how 
polygamy and cruelty, lust and fierceness go 
hand in hand, and how the antediluvian 
chivalry that could name its women, '* Shade" 
and ^' Beauty" and '' Pleasantness," and sing to 
them poetic strains, could summon them to 
witness its ruthless revenge. In it lay already 
the expression of the spirit that soon filled the 
world with violence, and called imperatively 
for that later edict of God, *' Whoso sheddeth 
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." 
Its temper suggests the later epic hero, *'acer, 
impiger, iracundus," and the awful butchery, 
which, when one reflects for a moment, is seen 
to reign through even so famous a poem as 
the Iliad. In its outer form this is the sim- 
plest of poetry. For the poetic form may 



THE EARLY ARTS. 97 

consist in a balancing of movement, which 
is measure; of sound, which is rhyme and 
sometimes also alliteration; or a balancing 
of thoughts antithetically, synthetically or 
synonymously, as here. Since poetry, too, 
antedates all history, since it stands allied to 
music, and so often, as in the Egyptian song 
of the Pentaur, it is the voicing of daring- 
personal exploits, so here, in connection with 
this simplest fragment, we have all the condi- 
tions of historic verisimilitude for the origin 
of this incipient Odyssey. Here ends the 
catalogue of antediluvian art wdth a note- 
worthy silence. Xot a word of painting, 
which had practically no existence in Moses' 
day,^^ nor of sculpture, nor of architecture, or 
any of the sights that would have impressed 
the senses of a dweller in Babylon or Nineveh. 

17 t< We may say it is only by some abuse of terms that 
we can speak of Egyptian painting at all. No people have 
spread more color upon stone and wood than the Eg}^- 
tians, none have had a more true instinct for color har- 
mony; but yet they never attempted to express by the 
gradation of tone, by the juxtaposition or superposition 
of tints, the real aspects of the surfaces which present 
themselves to our eyes, aspects which are unceasingly 
modified by the amount of light or shadow, by distance 
and the state of the atmosphere. They used not the least 
glimmering of what we call chiaroscuro or of aerial per- 
spective." Perrot and Chipiez, "Hist, of Art in Ancient 
Egypt," ii. p. 331. 



98 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

And from this early scene of worldly devel- 
opment, but of profligacy and violence, which 
explains so much of subsequent history, we 
turn with pleasure to that revival in the house 
of Seth which apparently furnishes the clue to 
the *' sons of God" before the flood. 

The next stage of art indicated in the his- 
tory is in many ways remarkable. It is made 
supposable only by the condition of things al- 
ready described, the progress previously re- 
corded. I refer to the construction of the ark. 
Now, the essential facts concerning the del- 
uge and the rescue of one pious family from 
destruction I take it to be settled, if any thing 
historical or traditional can be settled, by the 
joint testimony of the human race. They seem 
to have been branded into the memory of the 
human family in all parts of the world. I will 
not weary you with even a summarj^ recital 
of this traditional knowledge, which has been 
so often set in array, and which comes from Eu- 
rope, Asia, Africa, iVmerica, and the islands of 
the ocean.^*^ It is inexplicable, except on two 
suppositions, the substantial unity of these 
races, with this one great central knowledge, 
so far at least as to have descended from one 
contemporaneous stock, and the stupendous na- 

^8 A good survey of them is found in Delitzsch's 
Genesis. 



THE EARLY ARTS. 99 

ture of the historic fact which in all their wan- 
derings and their elevation or degradation they 
never could shake ofi'from their recollection. I 
may add a third noticeable consideration, that 
when we take all these various traditions and 
sift from them their palpable absurdities and 
their local colorings, we can frame from them 
all a narrative that lies side by side with 
this sober and consistent Bible history. Tlie 
substance of the universal story, when thus 
sifted, is this : a wicked world destroyed by a 
flood for its wickedness; a righteous man and 
his family, together with pairs of animals, pre- 
served in an ark; the ark resting on a moun- 
tain ; birds sent out to ascertain the condition 
of the earth ; an altar built and sacrifices of- 
fered. These details are sometimes much 
abridged, and as often greatly expanded. The 
birds in the Chaldean legend of Berosus go 
three times. In some accounts the dove, 
the vulture and the raven figure ; in Michuacan 
their place is taken by the raven and the hum- 
ming-bird. The vedas associate with Manu 
seven other holy sages, and the traditions even 
of the Fiji Islands give the number of the 
saved as eight. Not to dwell on these and 
other traits of resemblance or diff*erence, the 
point I have in view is the construction of the 
ark — a very remarkable record. It supposes 



100 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

a skill and resources which can be accounted 
for only by the facts already related, this 
early and extraordinary development handed 
down from father to son, and increasing all the 
more rapidly by reason of longevity, till Noah 
could carry out effectively the Divine instruc- 
tions. See, however, the sobriety and verisi- 
militude of the narrative, which, granting the 
fundamental fact, in all its details of time and 
circumstance conforms to the exigencies, to an 
extent which of itself might almost fill the 
hour of this lecture. It assigns indeed a long 
time of expectation and of preparation, under- 
stood by one great body of commentators to 
be the one hundred and twenty years of Gen- 
esis vi. It was an enormous undertaking, 
demanding all the cutting instruments and 
metallic implements already invented. Ob- 
serve the material, as congruous to the region 
as was the shittim or acacia wood of the tab- 
ernacle to the region of Sinai. The ''gopher" 
wood of the ark is admitted to be pitch-wood, 
therefore light and comparatively easy of 
working. Lexicographers, from the similarity 
of the consonant elements, incline to suggest 
specifically the cypress. Now the cypress 
abounds throughout Asia Minor, and Fresh- 
field^^ mentions the cypress and the fir as con- 
's Fresbfield's "Caucasus," pp. 230, 253, 254, 275, 322. 



THE EARLY ARTS. 101 

stituting a prominent part of the forests far 
up in the mountains of CaucasuSo It grows 
to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. 
Nothing could be more suitable. The pine also 
abounds in these regions. The immense pine 
forests on the sources of the Rion or Phasis 
are among the few distinct statements of 
Freshfield; while Thielmann mentions the 
pines that half conceal the ravines of the Kura 
on the eastern slope, and the timber that is 
floated down the Koissu river to the Caspian 
sea. The cypress or the pine would have fur- 
nished the pitch for the caulking; or if we 
suppose the pitch to be bitumen — as it prob- 
ably was not — we are reminded of the exten- 
sive petroleum works now carried on at Buku 
on the Caspian, and of the bitumen springs 
still flowing at Is on the Euphrates. And the 
olive tree of which the dove brought a fresh- 
plucked leaf, grows also in Armenia, and is 
found on the south side of Mount Ararat at 
its foot. But the most remarkable, and equally 
consistent thing, is the architecture of the 
building; a ship with three successive cabins 
divided into compartments and " light to [the 
distance of] a cubit above " or from above, which 
permits us to conceive of a row of openings 
under the eaves, high above the range of the 
waters, for light and ventilation. The ark is 



102 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

ijot launched, observe, but built on dry land — 
possibly on some height where the pine or cy- 
press grew, and the waters may have '* risen 
fifteen cubits '' before it floated — whence it is 
gradually raised and ''lifted/' till it ''walked 
(^pn) on the face of the waters." But let us 
observe more carefully its remarkable dimen- 
sions. For while the Chaldean legend of 
Berosus gives us the impossible length of five 
furlongs and the breadth of two, and even ac- 
cording to the Babylonian tablet, if we may 
trust the figures, long given as doubtful, the 
size would be — reckoning the Egyptian cubit 
of 20.7 inches^"— 1035 in length and 103^ feet 
each in breadth and height The last of these 
dimensions — to say nothing of the length — . 
shows the wildness of the statement. But by 
the same standard the dimensions given in 
the Pentateuch would be 517 feet in length 
by 86^ width and 51f in height. Now the 
largest vessel of modern times, built by the 
nation that is mistress of the seas, after the 
most approved standard of naval architecture, 
was the Great Eastern. The interval of time 
between that first recorded vessel and this of 
the present generation is at least more than 

20 Such is the result of measurements according to Gen. 
Sir Henry James. Notes on the "Great Pyramid," pp. 9 
seq. 



THE EARLY ARTS. 103 

4000 years. But we reach this extraordinary 
result, that •the width of the ark was just 3^ 
feet more than that of the Great Eastern, and 
its height 6^ feet less — while its length, being 
162 feet less, would tell yet further for its 
strength and safety as a seaworthy craft. 

The manufacture of wine is the next recorded 
fact of progress. This again is far the oldest 
mention of a process, that of making and us- 
ing fermented drinks, which is nearly if not 
absolutely universal. And inasmuch as Noah 
the husbandman ''planted a vineyard," the ex- 
tent and plan of the planting would render it 
probable that the practice was older than Noah. 
It is, however, not every region of the earth 
that offers the vine for that purpose. A great 
variety of fermented drinks have existed, such 
as at least seven kinds of beer, made from 
malt, maize, millet, milk, cava, rice, rye, and 
several kinds of wine, as they are called, made 
from the apple, pear, sugar cane, from the 
agave in a large part of Asia, and from the 
palm far more extensively than from the 
vine, as in Chili, India, the Pacific Isles and 
all of Africa. But in Armenia none of thes-- 
resorts were called for. Its fertile soil, abound- 
ing in other fruits, yields an abundant supply 
of grapes.^^ So also does the whole neighbor- 

21 Cbesney, *' Euphrates and Tigris," i. p. 97. 



104 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

ing region of Georgia, and Thielmann found 
excellent wine among the valleys of the Cau- 
casus. ^'^ The earliest record of the wine man- 
ufacture thus refers it to its legitimate sur- 
roundings. The wine of Armenia and the 
neighboring regions is said to be still as un- 
fortunate in its influences as in the days of 
Noah. 

The most noteworthy account of any early 
architectural enterprise is found in the tower 
of Babel. This again is localized in its appropri- 
ate place, the region of Shinar or Babylonia. 
There seems to be in the writer s mind a clear 
reminiscence of Egypt, when he speaks of sub- 
stitutes for '' stone " and ''mortar." The im- 
mense structures of Egypt were of limestone 
and sandstone, joined by a mortar that has 
not lost its binding power with the lapse of 
ages. But had the writer implied a build- 
ing of kiln-burnt bricks in Egypt, he would 
have intimated that of which no trace is to 
be found in Egypt till Roman times. There 
are indeed a few specimens of such ancient 
brick in Egypt, but so few that for a long 
time their existence was positively denied. 
The old Egyptian bricks are all of sun-dried 
clay mixed with straw. Nor is such a cement 
as the sacred writer ascribes to this tower to 
22 "Caucasus," i. pp. 88, 234. 



THE EARLY ARTS. 105 

be found in Egypt, nor, so far as I am aware, 
in any region but one.-^ Bat in this region 
of Babylonia we meet all the circumstances. 
In the fountains at Kerkuk, Apcheron and 
other places, one just outside the walls at 
Nimroud, are abundant suppHes of bitu- 
men, ^^ which, when used as a cement, some- 
times becomes harder than the bricks it binds. 
Here too has come down the use of bricks 
" burnt to a burning," (Hebrew), so hard 
that thousands of them show the name of 
Nebuchadnezzar as distinct as if burnt yes- 
terday. Here also is that remarkable tower, 
Birs Nimroud, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar on 
the site of a more ancient unfinished building 
supposed to be the temple of Belus, and be- 
lieved by some (e. g.^ Schrader) to stand on the 
spot where Babel was begun. But whatever 
its history, the ruin, Birs Nimroud, composed 
so largely of burnt brick laid in bitumen, com- 
memorates the mode of construction peculiar 
to Babylonia. Indeed we can ascend almost 
to the date of this tower of Babel. For we 
have but to cross the Euphrates to the ruins 
of Mugheir — Ur of the Chaldees — to find in 
the basement of its temple this combina- 

23 At Warka (Erech) a partial use of bitumem was made 
with sun-dried bricks. 

24 Layard, ''Babylon and Nineveh," p. 202. 



106 HISTORY m THE PENTATEUCH. 

tion in its most primitive form. ''The burnt 
bricks are of a small size and inferior qual- 
ity, laid in bitumen, facing a solid mass of 
sun-dried brick and forming a solid wall out- 
side of it, ten feet in thickness. Writing of an 
antique cast appears on it, and the supposed 
date is 2300 b. c, a little earlier than the time 
commonly assigned to the building of the tower 
of Babel.^^ 

We gain no further information or intima- 
tion of the advances in art, or in the art of 
living, till we reach, by a long stride, the 
time of Abraham, although this is more than 
a thousand years anterior to any other authen- 
tic history. In his biography all is quite gen- 
eral till we find him in Egypt. Still as he 
comes from Haran, but yet more remarkably 
in Egypt and again in Palestine, w^e light ab- 
ruptly upon the institution of domestic slavery, 
first in written history. He returned from 
Egypt with man-servants and maid-servants, 
and was afterwards able from his own retainers 
to equip a band of three hundred and eighteen 
armed men. We plunge here into the midst of 
that institution that has so filled the history of 
Africa. What advances, so-called, in the con- 
dition of society are involved in this fact, can 
be best understood from the monuments of 

25 Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," i. p. 222. 



THE EARLY ARTS. 107 

Egypt, which exhibit such a remarkable and 
compUcated state of civiUzation as nothing 
else could have satisfactorily demonstrated. 
The Theban paintings show us slaves, both 
white and black, in numbers, the latter even 
holding the dish with hand reversed, as so oft- 
en at the present day.-^ They were employed 
within doors and without, in every mode of 
ministry to the grandeur and luxury of their 
masters. The pyramids bear perpetual witness 
that enforced labor existed in Egypt long be- 
fore the time of Abraham, while the old Ac- 
cadian code of Babylonia even legislated on 
the treatment of slaves. ^^ So also the institu- 
tion of the harem, largely filled with foreign 
women, in accordance with the narrative of 
Sarah, was early in full operation in Egypt. ^^ 
But of the early use of that animal so indis- 
pensable in Egypt, the camel — which was one 
of Pharaoh's presents to Abraham, but neither 
then nor later was delineated on the monu- 
ments, — we should know nothing otherwise 
than in this history, but for the corroborative 
bones which Hekekian Bey found in his ex- 
cavations in the delta.-^ And the remarkable 
a-bsence of this animal from all delineations 

26 Wilkinson, '* Ancient Egyptians," i. p. 141. 

27 Lenormant, '* Chaldean Magic," p. 383. 

28 Wilkinson, ii. p. 224. 

29 Ly ell's "Antiquity of Man," p. 36. 



108 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

on the monuments is possibly to be explained 
from their association with the afterwards 
hated Hyksos, who may have brought them 
from Asia, where their name originated, and 
who were probably in power in Abraham's time. 
It was when the patriarch went up out of 
Egypt, that for the first time we read of a 
man's being *^rich in silver and gold," as he 
was. In no other country do we so early find 
evidence of gold in such abundance, and of 
such skill in its manufacture. The gold found 
in Assyria and Babylonia is later in date and 
less in amount. Small and scanty gold and 
silver ornaments occur at Mughier and Warka 
in Chaldea. The gold of Cyprus is still later. 
The treasures at Troy were of the Homeric 
city, as is supposed, the previous strata yield- 
ing to Schliemann but three primitive gold 
rings, an electrum brooch, and no silver, and 
the lowest stratum only one small silver brooch 
and one gilt copper knife. But Egypt seems 
to have abounded in gold from the earliest 
times, earlier perhaps than in silver. The gold 
mines of Ethiopia have within a few years been 
brought to light in the Bisharee desert, eight- 
een days' journey south-east of Kom Ombos 
on the Nile. Here are deep excavations in 
the quartz rock, and ruins of miners' huts 
which, however, may date only from the time 



THE EARLY ARTS, 109 

of the Caliphs. But no traveller up the Nile 
will have failed to see in the tombs of the 
twelfth dynasty at Beni Hassan — where the 
fluted Doric columns antedate by one or two 
thousand years those of Greece — the picture 
of the whole process of washing the ore, fusing 
the metal w4th the help of the blow-pipe, mak- 
ing it into ornaments, weighing it in scales 
peculiar to this use, together with the various 
operations of the goldsmith. But this, though 
older far than the Exodus, is not the earliest 
indication. '* The same mode of washing and 
working it is figured on monuments of the 
fourth dynasty,"^^ and Mr. Birch informs us, 
possibly in too sweeping terms, that the 
nobles of that dynasty had each his own 
gold-worker as well as glass-blower, potter, 
tailor, baker and butler, his dancer, harpist 
and singer. ^^ Any one who has seen but a 
part of the Egyptian jewelry that is scat- 
tered in the museums of the world, and 
especially the superb collection in the Bou- 
lak Museum, largely from the tomb of 
queen Ah-hotep, the mother of Ahmes, will 
need no commendation of the Egyptian jewel- 
er's skill, even to the art of imitating the em- 
erald, amethyst and lapis lazuli in glass. 

30 Wilkinson, ii. p. 139. 

31 Bircli, "History of Egypt," p. 45. 



110 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Nefert of Snefru's time wears her necklace of 
rubies and emeralds. And the delicate cut- 
ting of hard stones, and even the cutting 
upon a glass bead the name of Amun-m-het 
of the 12th (or 18th) dynasty, explain where 
the Hebrews could have learned the art of en- 
graving the twelve precious stones of the High 
Priest's breast-plate with the names of the 
tribes of Israel/^ The ear-rings and bracelets 
sent to the bride of Isaac are the oldest writ- 
ten mention of the practice that is older than 
all other history, as is proved by the second 
stratum of Hissarlik and the sculptures and 
relics of Nineveh, and older even than this 
most ancient record, as is now known from 
the monuments of Egypt. 

Here too we find the earliest mention of 
money transactions, and of their method. 
For Abimelech pays Abraham a thousand of 
silver ^^ — a transaction more distinctly ex- 

32 Exodus xxviii. 15-21. ** Under the first Theban em- 
pire the Egyptians practiced the cutting of amethysts, 
cornelians, garnets, jasper, lapis lazuli, green and white 
feld-spar, obsidian, serpentine, steatite, rock crystal, red 
quartz, sardonyx, etc. We do not know whether these 
early workmen employed the lapidary's wheel, but we may 
safely say that they produced some of the finest works of 
the kind which are known to us." "History of Art, in 
Ancient Egypt," Perrot and Chipiez. London, 1883, ii. 
p. 288. 

33 Gen. XX. 16, xxiii. 16. 



THE EARLY ARTS. Ill 

plained subsequently, when Abraham buys 
the field and cave of Machpelah for four hun- 
dred shekels of silver, which, it is added, "he 
weighed to Ephron, current money with the 
merchant." These transactions bring out three 
points; (1) that in ancient times silver appears 
to have been the money metal, gold being re- 
served more for ornament; (2) that for a long 
period still money was not coined and stamped, 
but weighed — the Lydians being among the 
first to use coin, and that perhaps a thousand 
years afterward ; (3) that even then the mer- 
chant, ("ino) the travelling tradesman was at his 
business of exchange. Later, in the history 
of Joseph, we encounter a whole caravan of 
traders on their way to Egypt with various 
commodities there in demand — spicery, balm 
and myrrh, to which they add on the journey 
the youthful slave. Of these commodities, the 
first two, the "'"iv and the ri^<:D^, Ebers thinks 
he has found the very names in the Egyptian 
tal and nekjxif^ in close proximity, in the la- 
boratory at Edfu. 

The business-like method of Abraham in his 
traffic conforms to the careful reckonings so 
abundant in Egypt, and to the existence of a 
hundred Chaldean tablets filled with business 

34 Ebers, **^gypten und die Biicher Moses," p. 290. 



112 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Contracts, both before and after the time of 
Abraham. ^^ 

To the same volume we are indebted for 
our oldest written knowledge of the contrast 
between the elaborate civilization of the Nile, 
with its butlers and bakers and feas tings, its 
irrigation, its grain trade, its leavened bread, 
its fine linen and dyed cloths, its embalming 
of the dead, its defensive strongholds and 
chariots and armies, on the one hand; and the 
simpler life, partly tent-life of Palestine, with 
its unleavened bread, its wells, pastures and 
flocks, its earthen furnaces, its skin bottles, 
its donkeys for burdens, its warlike mountain 
tribes and its degraded wickedness by the 
Dead Sea; and also the intermediate civiliza- 
tion of rural Mesopotamia, where the camel 
and the kine predominated in the flocks and 
herds, where though town life prevailed, the 
daughter repaired to the well with the pitcher 
on her shoulder, where there were teraphim, 
and labor-wages, and marriage contracts and 
wedding feasts, where the bride set forth with 
her household stuff*, and the family were ac- 
customed to '* send her away with songs, with 
tabret and with harp." 

So dependent indeed have we been upon 
these ancient records for all that is consistent 
^5 Tompkins, "Times of Abraham," p. 36. 



THE EARLY ARTS, 113 

and coherent in our notions of this earlier state 
of the race, that the mere omission of any cir- 
cumstance in this narrative has left a blank 
in history, ordinarily not to be supplied. It 
is a noticeable illustration that glass, whether 
from the difficulty of its manufacture or its 
extreme fragility, or from not belonging to 
their condition of life in Egypt or perhaps 
from being of far less utility than the stronger 
and cheaper pottery, seems not to have found 
its way among the Hebrews, and is never 
mentioned in these old historic books, nor 
found in the ruins of Palestine. And per- 
haps the simple omission w^as the occasion of 
the belief prevalent till recently, that glass 
was unknown, until it was accidentally dis- 
covered by some travelling Phenicians. I 
remember two otherwise intelligent Scotch 
clergymen in Rome, who still advocated this 
exploded notion, one of whom concluded his ar- 
gument by saying, ''You'll find no glass about 
Solomon's temple." And yet not only are ob- 
jects of glass somewhat common among Egyp- 
tian relics, but the process of its manufacture 
into bottles is delineated in the tombs of 
Beni Hassan, and it is admitted to have been 
older than the great Pyramid; while such 
was the skill displayed in its manufacture, 
that not only was it made into artificial pre- 



114 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

cious stones, but figures were wrought into 
glass in such wise that the pattern of the 
surface passed in right lines through the sub- 
stance, and often so minutely exact that it 
could be made out only by the use of a lens. 

And thus it is that many a hiatus in our 
knowledge comes from the reserve of this an- 
cient book. And while many a perplexity is 
cleared up by its solitary voice, many others 
remain unsolved for want of those few words, 
or it may be the one word, that it does not 
speak. Vainly do we sometimes wish, '' 
that the word had been spoken." What light 
it might so easily have cast on a multitude of 
now diflficult if not insoluble problems. For 
we might address that ancient author not 
with possible guesses once put to an exhumed 
and shrivelled corpse, but to a once seen and 
living witness, 

* * And hast thou walked about — how strange a story — 
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago, 

When the Memnonium was in all its glory 
And time had not begun to overthrow 

Those temples, palaces and piles stupendous ? " 

But though that witness must have been 
an attendant at the dazzling court of the 
great Rameses, no less than of the infatuated 
Menephtha, the Sphinx itself could not be 
more reticent of that mighty but boastful 



THE EARLY ARTS. 115 

name, though cut so deep on half the monu- 
ments of Egypt. For what had Moses in 
common with Eameses? And why should 
he commemorate that useless name ? In his 
imperishable record the serene lawgiver will 
hand down that tyrant's name neither to the 
fame he so intensely coveted, nor to the in- 
famy he deserved. In all the compass of his- 
tory there cannot be found a more singular 
case of reticence. 



LECTURE FOURTH. 

THE EARLY CONSANGUINmES. 

The books of Moses, as well as the remainder 
of the Scriptures, seem to assert and assume 
the unity of the race, and their common or- 
igin. This lies not alone in the statement, 
that Eve was called by Adam the ''mother 
of all living," but also in the uniform tracing 
of all branches and members of the human 
family to the one ancestry; in the assumption 
that the one fall affected in its consequences 
all the race as the offspring of Adam ; and that 
the redemption was and is for that one lost 
race. 

The methods and tendencies of scientific 
thought have in one respect singularly changed 
the aspect of this whole question within a 
generation. It is like one of the marvels of 
modern magic. Forty years ago we were 
obliged by laborious inductions and a wide 
range of observations and historical researches 
to show the possibility — then vehemently and 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 117 

sturdily denied — that races so diverse could 
have come from a common ancestry. Now 
on the other side, this labor is taken off our 
hands by the general concession, rather the 
vigorous assertion, of the same type of think- 
ers and reasoners, that anything and all things 
living may have descended from precisely the 
same kind of living germ, — not to speak of 
what lies still further back. It is, when we 
consider its celerity, certainly one of the most 
amazing flank-movements, and stupendous rev- 
olutions in the history of thought. 

But as it may be doubted not only whether 
this theory has been proved, but whether it 
ever will or can be proved, we do not find 
ourselves absolved from the necessity of glanc- 
ing, however briefly, at the lines of human 
consanguinity from the beginning of the race. 

Without resorting to any evolutionary hy- 
pothesis, we may allude independently to 
the indications first., that the tribe of men 
might have descended from one pair. This 
ground was well canvassed, in the main, long 
ago. It was well shown that the physical 
differences now existing are no insuperable 
objection. These were found to be in accord- 
ance with well-known facts of wider range. 
Before the researches of Darwin had been 
given to the public, so high an authority as 



118 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

Dr. Carpenter had announced as a well settled 
fact of observation that among the domesti- 
cated races of quadrupeds the characters 
most susceptible of variation are, stature^ gen- 
eral conformation of the hody^ conformation of 
the skull, quantity, texture and color of the 
hairy covering^ physical character as shown in 
the increase of intelligence and disappear- 
ance of some of the instinctive propensities. 
These comprise summarily the whole cata- 
logue of diversities found in the human 
species. 

In regard to the human race it has been 
shown abundantly and historically (1) that each 
of the external differences often ceases to be 
characteristic. Thus the black color is found 
not only in individuals, as the black Jews 
of Portugal, but in tribes, as the Bicharis on 
the Red Sea, whose hair and character are 
perfectly Semitic; and the white color in 
the brutalized descendants of certain exiled 
Irish of Ulster whose features are almost of 
the African type.^ *' There are negroes," says 
Quatrefages, *' whose prognathism is no more 
marked than in whites, and whites in whom 
it is very pronounced;" the quality of the 
hair not being an invariable mark, nor the 
shape of the section of the hair — whether 

» Cabell, *' Unity of Mankind," p. 98. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 119 

oval, circular, or cylindrical — a characteristic; 
while other distinctive qualities of races often 
shade into each other. Indeed Quatrefages 
has abundantly shown that the limits of 
variation in animals of the same species are 
even greater than in man between the white 
and the negro taken as extremes, and they 
include color, anatomical character and ex- 
ternal form, even to the modifications of the 
head.^ (2) It has been shown that we can 
frequently trace the history of great physical 
changes, as in the Magyar of Hungary, un- 
questionably of the old Turanian or Tartar 
stock, whose residence for a thousand years 
in the fertile plains of Southern Europe, and 
consequent changes of habits therewith, have 
also changed the pyramidal skull into an ellip- 
tical one, and obliterated every physical trace 
of their Tartar features ; the Turks of Europe 
and Western Asia modifying from the Cen- 
tral-Asia toward the European type; and 
the physical degradation and transformation 
wrought by even two centuries of hardship 
and want in Sligo and northern Mayo in 
Ireland/ (3) It also is found that often the 
linguistic affinity is strongest where the phy- 
sical resemblance is slightest, and weakest 

2 Quatrefages, ** Human Species," p. 2. 

3 Cabell, ''Unity of Mankind," p. 99. 



120 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

where this is strongest. An instance of the 
former kind is found in the relation of the 
Malay o- Polynesian and American races, and 
of the latter kind in that of the Chinese and 
Mongolian races. These fundamental points 
have been abundantly proved. If it be ob- 
jected that the appearance of the negro is 
too far back in history to allow time for the 
establishment of such decided changes, the 
negro appearing, it has been said, as early 
as the sixth dynasty in Egypt, the reply is 
obvious and easy, that changes are often rapid 
and become permanent at once, especially 
where the same influences continue; as the 
Ancon breed of sheep sprang from a single 
male in Massachusetts in 1791, and the Mau- 
champ sheep in France in 1828, the hornless 
oxen of Paraguay from a single male in 1770, 
and the Niata cattle of South America which 
are of comparatively recent origin, but per- 
manent. So the African race, once differen- 
tiated, might easily become permanent — es- 
pecially as the conditions remain. But Quat- 
refages declares that " the true negro did not 
exist in Europe during the quaternary epoch." 
No fossil skull belongs to the African or Mela- 
nesia type.^ 

4 "Human Species," p. 292. The statement that "we 
see negroes on the monuments in the Sixth Dynasty" 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 121 

The objection arising from the dispersion 
of the race in primitive times across wide 
expanses of ocean, has been abundantly an- 
swered by reference to known facts. Lyell, 
for example, cites cases of island savages hav- 
ing drifted in their canoes from Wateoo to 
Otaheite, 550 miles, from Ancorso to Samar, 
800 miles, from Anaa, one of the Coral Isles, 
to uninhabited islands, 600 miles, and from 
[Ilea to one of the Coral Isles, 1500 miles — 

(Southall, "Recent Origin," p. 26) is not quite accurate. 
We do not see them depicted on the monuments till the 
eighteenth dynasty. The first mention of Nahsi or ne- 
groes is found in an inscription at San by one Una, an 
officer of Pepi of the Sixth Dynasty. He records, among 
other things, his having levied an army of Nahsi from 
xiruret and other lands of Ethiopia. The inscription in 
full is given in the "Records of the Past," vol. ii., trans- 
lated by S. Birch. The rendering "negroes" is accepted 
also by Brugsch, ("History of Egypt," i. p. 119). Mr. 
Birch, however, in his notes on Wilkinson's " Ancient 
Egyptians" (London 1878) remarks (vol. i. p. 261) "the 
Blacks were generally called Nahsi or revolters." This 
definition naturally raises the question how far the color 
is matter of inference, by reason of the provinces being 
Ethiopian. The reign of Pepi was long subsequent to the 
beginning of Egyptian history. Some 767 years are as- 
signed by Birch in his history to the first three dynasties, 
and about 1000 years to the first six dynasties. This 
allows a long time for race changes. Indeed there is no 
absurdity in the suggestion that- race tendencies might 
have been transmitted from before the Deluge, by the 
marriages of Noah's sons. 



122 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

far enough to have gone from some parts of 
Africa to South America or from Spain to the 
Azores, and thence to North America/ In- 
deed it seems now conceded that all the 
Polynesians, from the Sandwich Islands to 
New Zealand, from the Tonga Islands to Easter 
Island, belong to the same race/ In many 
cases their traditions commemorate the an- 
cient migrations/ How the communication 
even with America could be and in part ac- 
tually was established has been abundantly 
indicated by Quatrefages,^ first in the north- 
west across Behring's Straits, divided midway 
by the St. Lawrence Islands, or farther south 
from Kamschatka to Alaska by the Aleutian 
Islands, or even further south where the ''cur- 
rent of Tessan" has frequently cast abandoned 
junks on the coast of California ; also directly 
across the main ocean — if not over the Pacific 
from China, of which there seems to be evi- 
dence,^ yet certainly and repeatedly from Eu- 
rope — the Scandinavian appearing to have 
landed on the eastern coast of North America 
between Greenland and Long Island as many 
as five times from the year 886 to the year 
1007, beginning with Erick the Eed and end- 

5 Lyell's *' Geology," Eleventh Ed. ii. 471-2. 

6 Quatrefages, '* Origin of Human Species," p. 188. 

7 i6. 192-8. 8 Ih, 199 etc. 9 Ih, 204-7. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 123 

ing with Tliorfinn. So abundant and so 
marked have been these evidences of migra- 
tion over the land and tlie sea that Sir Charles 
Lyell early made, and left permanently on 
record in his latest (eleventh) edition, this 
remarkable utterance: ''Were the whole of 
mankind now cut oflF, with the exception of 
one family, inhabiting the old or the new conti- 
nent, or Australia, or even some coral islet of 
the Pacific, we might expect their descendants, 
though they should never become more en- 
lightened than the Australians, the South Sea 
Islanders or the Esquimaux, to spread in the 
course of ages over the whole earth, diffused 
partly by the tendency of the population to 
increase in a limited district beyond the 
means of subsistence, and partly by the acci- 
dental drifting of canoes by tides and currents 
to distant shores."^" 

The objection arising from the number and 
diversity of languages — reckoned at some 900 
or more — has been met in part by the success 
already achieved in tracing the connection of 
certain tongues widely dispersed, as the Aryan 
from India through the west of Europe, to 
one common stock or family, and some of 
these families to a still higher connection; 
and the answer has been supplemented by 

10 Lyell's ''Geology," ii 474. 



124 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

the express views of many of the highest lin- 
guistic authorities, as Miiller and others, that 
there is nothing in the present aspect of the 
various languages of the earth to militate 
against the common origin of the nations. 

And if it be still objected that granting the 
possibility of an original unity of speech, the 
time supposed to have elapsed is insufficient 
to explain the vast changes; the effectual 
answer has been made, viz., that the rapidity 
of linguistic changes varies immensely with 
the circumstances and conditions of life, 
whether under the existence of a written 
and diffused literature, as for the last few 
centuries of modern Europe, fixing its form, 
or in a region where there is permanence of 
residence and institutions, with settled and 
centralizing domestic relations, as in ancient 
Egypt and Palestine, — under both these con- 
ditions language becomes fixed and remains 
long unchanged. But in a country and a 
race undergoing great changes of location, 
and diversity of experiences amounting to 
revolutions, the linguistic changes are equally 
great and rapid. Thus '4n the ninth century 
there existed in Europe no less than seven 
Romance dialects, all descended from the 
Latin and all formed after the downfall of 
the Romam Empire, viz., the Italian, Walla- 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 125 

chian, Rhetian, Proven 9al, Spanish, Portuguese, 
French." In Italy the change was repeated. 
For '*the population of Rome in the year 1000 
spoke a language quite different from that 
spoken in the time of Constantine, and equally 
different from that of their descendants."^^ 

The general objections to the unity of the 
race and their descent from a common an- 
cestor, thus disappear before knoion specific 
facts. And there meets us on the positive 
side, the following solid array of arguments 
in support and illustration of the original re- 
cord, some of them the result only of late 
researches: 

1. Their agreement in all pathological and 
physiological phenomena, subjects of the same 
diseases and the same remedies; (2) their sim- 
ilarity of anatomical structure, such that the 
surgeon educated in New York practises 
boldly with no changes in Pekin or Aus- 
tralia; (3) similarity in the fundamental pow- 
ers and traits of mind — so that however de- 
graded any given race may be, intellectually 
or morally, it has the germs of the highest 
characteristics and capacity for the highest 
attainments; (4) similar limits to the duration 
of life under similar circumstances; (5) the 
same normal temperature of body and average 

11 SouthaU, ''Eecent Origin of Man," pp. 28, 29. 



126 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

rate of pulsation; (6) equal duration of preg- 
nancy; (7) unrestrained fruitfulness between 
the various races ;^^ to which may be added 
(8) the apparent radiation historically from 
a common centre in Western Asia; (9) the 
strong linguistic connections already indicated, 
binding together races as far removed as from 
India to Scotland and from Malacca to North 
America; (10) the common traditions and 
customs of the races, one of the most remark 
able of which is the tradition of the Flood — 
although by no means the only bond of con- 
nection of this kind. As this Biblical an- 
nouncement of the common descent of the 
human family long antedated the researches 
that confirm it, and practically over-rode the 
proud exclusiveness of many of the nations — 
the Egyptian lording it over the ''vile Khetas" 
and other tributaries, the Athenian distin- 
guishing himself from the barbarian, and the 
Chinese from the outside barbarian — so i^, 
would appear that every fresh advance of in- 
vestigation in modern days tends to add to ic 
new confirmation. The arguments for a Pre- 
Adamite man have not seemed to me impor- 
tant enough to require discussion — in this 
brief course — and they only make after all an 
older Adam. 

12 The seven points given above are from Delitzsch, 
*' Commentary on Genesis." 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 127 

On taking leave of the first parents, the sa- 
cred narrative traces the line of Cain for some 
generations before dropping it finally to ac- 
company thenceforth the line of Shem and 
the ''sons of God." A certain similarity in 
these two lists, either in form or signification, 
nas led a considerable number of writers to 
maintain that they were originally the same, 
and are to be regarded as variations of the 
same tradition. But here, among other vin- 
dicators of the narrative, we find Lenormant, 
who is free enough in his speculations, com- 
ing to the help of Keil and Delitzsch and 
Kurtz, pointing out the marked differences 
of real meaning connected with a partial re- 
semblance of form and sound. Thus the 
Mehujael and the Mahalaleel mean, the one 
the ''smitten of God," the other "praise or 
splendor of God"; Cain and Cainan "acquisi- 
tion," and perhaps "smith," Methusael, and 
Methuselah " man of desire " and "man of the 
dart"; Irad and Jared "fugitive" and "de- 
scent" or "service"; and when the name is 
the same, as Enoch " initiator," it is capable 
of a wholly diverse application, the one being 
the initiator of town life and of the secular arts, 
the other of religious and spiritual life. While 
etymologies are more than precarious in these 
remote ages, we may use Lenormant's sug- 
gestion so far forth as to insist on the clear 



128 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

differences which it has been attempted to 
overlook and confound, and in the two iden- 
tical instances, Enoch and Lamech, to recog- 
nize the well-known law of identical names 
passing down different branches of the same 
family as well as in the same family line, — a 
law so common in the Scriptures and out as 
to require no special explanation or apology. 
It may be added that as we know not when 
the names were given, whether contempora- 
neously or subsequently, there is a possibility 
which Delitzsch and Lenormant both suggest, 
of a naming with reference to the exhibition 
of a contrast throughout — a partail similarity 
and real diversity. 

When noAv we attempt to follow down 
this second line of early consanguinity, the 
Shemite, wdth its figures, we find ourselves at 
once dealing with several extremely difficult 
and complicated questions, on which in the 
present state of our knowledge no man can 
offer an absolute solution, hid onhj suggestions 
tvMch look towards a solution, suggestions to 
be made with all modesty. 

These questions concern the relation of the 
individuals to each other in the line of suc- 
cession; the length of life ascribed to them 
respectively ; and the total duration thus in- 
dicated from the Creation to the Deluge. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 129 

Reversing the order of these questions, there 
meets us that of the length of time prior to 
the Deluge, and thereby somewhat directly 
the duration of man's history on the earth, 
involved chiefly in this period. For the length 
of time from the Christian era to the birth of 
Abraham can be reckoned without any large 
range of variation — perhaps 200 or 300 years; 
and the period from Abraham to Noah offers 
us two Biblical Chronologies (Hebrew and 
Septuagint) admitting, to some degree, pos- 
sible confirmatory or corrective collation with 
semi-historic events. But the previous period 
stands alone. No figures whatever are offered 
from any source except the Pentateuch. And 
the importance of the inquiry shows itself in 
its bearing on the general question of the anti- 
quity of the human race. I propose to make 
some modest and cautious suggestions bearing 
on the inquiry. 

To determine the antiquity of the race, then, 
resort has been had to two sources of inquiry; 
one, the figures of the Hebrew Scriptures, com- 
bined as well as practicable; the other, certain 
archaeological explorations, comparing the rel- 
ics of man found buried in the surface of the 
earth with certain other (geological) phenom- 
ena and estimating the probable lapse of time 
required for these phenomena to have taken 



130 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

place. Both these processes are flexible and 
give us, as will appear, variable results. The 
Biblical figures are made by intelligent and 
sober-minded men to vary some hundreds if 
not thousands of years, according to the meth- 
od of treatment; while the scientific figures, in 
the hands of very eminent men, vary not by 
hundreds or thousands, but by tens of thou- 
sands, hundreds of thousands, and, in some 
estimates, millions of years ^^ — a range that is 
as wild as wide. 

It is to be observed, however, that the scien- 
tific conjectures for the past few years have 
been becoming more cautious and much more 
moderate. Astronomers like Tait and others 
are ceasing to allow the almost unlimited dur- 
ation for the present order of things demanded 
by Darwin and Haeckel. The extreme anti- 
quity of certain attendant and determinative 
phenomena is become, if not greatly re- 
duced, yet vigorously disputed until such 
recent writers as Le Conte, while taking a 
wide range up to a possible 100,000 on one 
hand come down to 10,000 as the possible 
limit on the other. And in detail, whereas 
the actual association of human relics with 

13 Le Conte from 10,000 to 100,000, Lubbock 100,000 to 
240,000, Draper many hundred thousand years, Prof. Vivien 
1,000,000, Dr. Hunt 9,000,000. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES, 131 

those of the mammoth reindeer, cave-bear, 
cave-lion, cave-hyena, etc., and the supposed 
great antiquity of the latter, was one strong 
point, it appears, at least by the concession of 
Lubbock, Dawkins,^^ and others, that the cave- 
lion and hyena are not different from living 
species, but driven /i^r^Aer soutli^ and the bear, 
perhaps, not different from the brown bear of 
Europe; and many circumstances since the 
discovery of an entire mammoth frozen up 
in Siberia so perfectly preserved that the 
wolves, etc., ate up its flesh, and the fresh- 
ness of a great multitude of other remains, 
— a reindeer-horn even emitting a fresh odor 
when cut — have tended greatly to reduce the 
probable time of the disappearance. Indeed 
Winchell now remarks,^^ ''the contemporane- 
ousness of man with the extinct mammoth is 
no more proof of man's high antiquity, than 
the co-existence of the extinct Dodo and the 
Dutch painter is proof that the Dutchman 
lived a hundred thousand year ago." The 
gravel and peat deposites covering the hu- 
man remains, and the adjacent erosions of 
the streams, as in the Somme valley, are now 
shown to have admitted of far more rapid form- 
ation than was formerly assigned to them. The 

14 Lubbock, p. 289 etc. 

15 ''Preadamite Man," p. 436. 



132 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

vast remoteness of the glacial age — another 
time-mark in reference to man — has been im- 
mensely reduced, with a tendency still in the 
same direction ; Lyell having come down from 
the date of 800,000 to 200,000 years, Croll from 
240,000 to 80,000, while Dr. Andrews of Chi- 
cago endeavors to show that the glacial drift 
of the Northwestern lakes is not older than 
from 5,300 to 7,500. Southall and Prof Win- 
chell calculate its disappearance in Wiscon- 
sm at a little more than 6000 years ago. 
Mr. Huxley in 1878 declared the evidence 
of man prior to the drift to be " of a very dubi- 
ous character."^® Meanwhile it has long been 
seen that to talk of a stone age is to speak of 
a time perfectly fluctuating, rather than of any 
fixed or proximate date, inasmuch as the 
stone age in one race is contemporaneous 
with the silver and gold of another; thus 
two hundred and fifty years ago it was all 
stone age in North America, although 1000 
years earlier the mound-builders were using 
copper; and while all Europe and America 
have been for these many centuries in the 
height of the arts, the stone age until very 
recently had not passed away from the Es- 
quimaux, if it has now. The time is merely 
relative, and recently Prof Winchell has ex- 

16 Cited in * ' New Englander, " May, 1881. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 133 

pressed the belief that in Europe it did not 
go back further than 2500 or 3000 b. c/' 

While these variations and amazing reduc- 
tions have been going on in the interpretation 
of the one record, questions have been also 
raised in regard to the other, the Biblical, as to 
the possibility of its expansion. No questions 
could legitimately have been raised but for 
certain striking phenomena attending the 
numbers themselves. One of these is, as you 
are well aware, a divergence of the Hebrew, 
the Greek Septuagint and the Samaritan fig- 
ures, showing an intentional and systematic 
set of changes, whereby the Samaritan makes 
the time from Adam's creation to the flood 
1307 years, the Hebrew 1656, the Greek 2262— 
the difference to the time of Methuselah being 
made between the last two,bytheadditionto one 
or subtraction from the other of 100 years prior 
to the birth of the son who is named as continuing 
the line. Continued to the time of Abraham, it 
makes a difference of about 1400 years. On 
the whole, the predominant view has been to 
accept the Hebrew as the true text. But it is 
to be borne in mind that we have but one 
Hebrew manuscript as old as the year 580 a. d., 
and that we in no case seem to get back of 
a Masoretic revision; while the Septuagint 

17 *'Preadamite Man," p. 421. 



134 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

represents a text which dates 250 years b. C; 
Whatever the decision as to relative correct- 
ness, the phenomenon must raise questions 
and doubts, as it shows somewhere the hand 
of the emendator. In addition to this it is 
noteworthy that we find just ten generations 
from Adam to Noah as from Noah to Abra- 
ham — raising the question whether these may 
not, as in Matthew's genealogy, have been in- 
tentionally equalized by omissions, perhaps in. 
the first series. We cannot make any special 
account of Lenorm ant's attempt to convert the 
whole idea of ten generations into a mythical 
thing, by comparing traditions of the same 
number, found by some forcing, among Chal- 
deans, Assyrians, Iranians, Indians and Egyp- 
tians, since these, so far as they have founda- 
tion, might be but an echo of the originally 
known and here recorded fact. But so sound 
a theological writer as Dr. Frederic Gardiner ^^ 
has endeavored to show from the method of 
the Pentateuch genealogies themselves that 
we may possibly understand this record thus; 
as combining in its extreme brevity two facts in 
one, viz., "the age in each case of commencing 
paternity and the name of the particular son 
by whom the line was continued, he not being 
necessarily the first son, but born at any sub- 

i8 '^Bibliotheca Sacra," 1873, pp. 323, seq. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES, 135 

sequent time during his father s Hfe." This 
theory would allow such an addition to the 
chronology as to make, after deducting 100 
years in each case for longevity and infirmity, 
the extreme possible interval of time from the 
Creation to the Deluge instead of 1656 to be 
6499 years, and the same principle would add 
some 500 years between Shem and Abraham/* 
In the complications and questions that hang 
over the whole subject it may be well to 
bear in mind the possibility of some such so- 
lution, should it be necessary. This is quite a 
different principle of proceeding from the ar- 
bitrary decision of Bunsen^^ that these patri- 
archal lives are merely epochs. Ernst de 
Bunsen somewhat similarily answers that the 
name of a person was given to a period^^ — a 

19 "Thus," he says, '* Seth might have begun to be a fa- 
ther at 105, but might have actually begotten Enos (by whom 
the line was continued) at any reasonable time during the 
807 years which he afterwards lived; so that the true mean- 
ing in the text can be shown by a paraphrase running in 
this wise; Seth lived 105 years and begat children among 
whom was Enos; and Seth lived after his beginning to 
beget children 807 years and begat both sons and daugh- 
ters, And all the days of Seth were 912 years." I must 
refer you to his own discussion for the argument. 

20 '* Egypt's Place," iv. p. 395. 

21 "Chronology of the Bible," p. 4. He maintains also 
that " the sum total of the lives assigned to the patriarchs 
has been shortened by the sum total of the years which 



136 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

modification of Knobel's view, which finds in 
Lamech and his sons ethnical personifications 
or representations of races — and he would add 
the whole of their lives without even deduct- 
ing for the time previous to paternity, and 
reaches a total of 8225 years from Adam, to 
the Flood. These two views are so far forth 
combined and varied by Eev. T. P. Crawford, 
that he takes each first statement (''Adam 
lived 130 years," *'Seth lived 105 years'') to be 
the total life of each individual and supposes 
the name afterwards in each instance ("All 
the days of Adam " or Seth) to be used in a 
family sense — of the special Adamite family 
till the Sethite family ascendancy.^^ I do not 
cite these theories to approve them, — although 
for the theory that a name might represent 
not a person but a race we certainly find war- 
rant in several of the names in Chapter X., (e. 
(/., Sidon, Canaan, Mizrain, Javan, Madai, etc.) 
— but to show the possibilities of speculation 
and explanation upon this abbreviated nar- 

each patriarch is recorded to have lived together with his 
one recorded son," thus reducing an actual period of 8225 
years, from Adam to the Flood, to 1656 years. His re- 
sult it will be observed is greater than that of Prof. Gar- 
diner, reached in a somewhat different way. 

22 WinchelFs "Preadamites," p. 450. This gives the 
same prolongation of time as the theory of Gardiner and 
De Bunsen. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 137 

rative. It is difficult, however, to find any 
foundation for Lenormant's attempt to con- 
vert these lives into cyclical periods^ on the 
main hint that Enoch's life was 365 years. 
Enough perhaps has been said to indicate that 
we may well be cautious of pledging the 
Scriptures to an absolute completely and rigid 
chronology, till we learn further facts. 

While making all allowance for possible exi- 
gencies, personally I do not as yet see valid 
reason to adopt any view of the time of man's 
existence very greatly in excess, if not of 
Usher's, yet of Hale's Chronology, 5411 b. c. 
I find that all definite records and distinct 
traditions go up to a limited distance and stop 
there, this side even of the date thus gained. 
Thus the latest and most careful authorities. 
Chinese investigators now find nothing solid 
in the antiquity of China earlier than eleven 
or twelve hundred b. c. ; we find no Iranic 
civilization earlier than 1500 b. c, nor Indian 
earlier than 1200. The Trojan epoch does not 
probably reach further than 1200 to 1300 
B. c, nor the subjacent cities than 2000. The 
latest result in regard to Phenicia gives but 
the sixteenth or seventeenth century b. c. 
Sayce and Lenormant place the beginning of 
Assyria about 1500 b. c, and Smith and Le- 
normant the beginning of Babylon 2300 b. c. 



138 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

In the case of Egypt one only of the prominent 
Egyptologists, (Mariette Bey,) insists on find- 
ing no contemporaneous dynasties, but makes 
all successive; and his estimate of 5004 years 
B. c. to the accession of Menes, still falls 
within the limits of Hale's Chronology, while 
Poole's and Wilkinson's estimates subtract 
more than 2000 years from Mariette's figures. 
If it be replied that the Egyptian and Baby- 
lonian civilizations first present themselves in 
a comparatively advanced condition, and there- 
fore suppose a vast preceding interval ; we ad- 
mit the fact, but question the inference, at 
least in its extent. We affirm the striking- 
fact that Egypt comes before us with its pyra- 
mids and hieroglyphics, and Babylonia appar- 
ently with its four great cities and some de- 
gree of skill in the arts. But we maintain 
that this condition of things in this region 
best comports with the Biblical record as to 
the early condition and progress of man, with 
his attainment in the arts, and the longevity 
that facilitated that progress by the contempo- 
rary accumulation of the fruits of ripened ex- 
perience. If we accept the Biblical antedilu- 
vian narrative as it stands, all eastern history 
is no longer mysterious, but a simple and na- 
tural phenomenon. It is thoroughly consist- 
ent with itself and with all known facts. And 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 139 

in this line a very striking coincidence is men- 
tioned, viz. : '' Taking as a basis the annual 
increase of population in France (which has 
the best statistics for the past two hundred 
years) at -^l^ a year, six persons (say Shem, 
Ham, and Japheth, with their wives) would in- 
crease to 1,400,000,000 in 4211 years. But in 
1863, the estimated population of the earth 
w^as 1,400,000,000, and 4211 years would carry 
lis back from that time to 2348 b. c, the com- 
mon date of the Flood." ^^ And inasmuch as 
man is always a constructor of permanent 
memorials, marking in some way the earth's 
surface, even in his rudest state, in all parts 
of the world w^th his structures — dolmens, 
mounds, stone circles, fortifications or enclos- 
ures, excavations, stone huts, and the like, 
the direct and common sense inquiry is this: 
if man has been upon the earth all these tens 
or hundreds of thousands of years, where are 
those clear marks of that long residence to be 
found ? And echo answers, " ^Yhere ? " 

But on this subject of the early consan- 
guinities as exhibited in the tenth of Genesis, 
one point I have as yet barely touched, — the 
extreme longevity of that antediluvian line, 
which such writers as Bunsen and Lenormant 
Jiave pronounced intrinsically impossible,^* and 

23 "NewEnglander," May, 1881. 

24 Bunsen, "Egypt's Place," iv. 395. 



140 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

'* inconsistent with the physiological condi- 
tions of the terrestrial life of inan."^'* We do 
not accept any such arbitrary dictum as de- 
ciding the question. Nor do we meanwhile 
recognize the practicability of escaping the 
difficulty by supposing a shorter year, such 
as a month. This would encounter the diffi- 
culty of making one patriarch a father at the 
age of between five and six of our years; and 
is explicitly precluded by the narrative in the 
very next chapter, which, while mentioning 
what took place in the six hundredth and six 
hundred and first years of Noah's life, gives 
us also the reckoning of months in the year, 
up to ten at least, and of days in the month 
up to twenty-seven. We may content our- 
selves with the general principle announced 
by Delitzsch, that *' the duration of antedilu- 
vian life depended on circumstances and con- 
ditions of the earth which our present knowl- 
edge cannot reach." Not to suggest that 
'^ climate, weather, and other natural condi- 
tions may have been quite difl'erent" and that 
*' life was much more simple and uniform," we 
may emphasize the statement that *'the after- 
effects of the condition of man in paradise 
[destined for immortality] would not be im- 
mediately exhausted." 

25 Lenormant, "Contemporary Review," April 1880. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 141 

All assertions how long man could live un- 
der very different circumstances from those 
which thousands of years of sin and self-abuse 
have brought upon him are daring, if not wild. 
They are as easy to make as they are impos- 
sible to prove. There is a respectable English 
writer who has argued from time to time, I 
believe in the ** Athenaeum," that there is no 
evidence of any life longer than one hundred 
years. The question is one on which a man 
dogmatizes, like this man, according to his 
surroundings and observations. 

Ask a man how long a tree will live. If 
he looks only on a peach-tree, he might say 
perhaps forty or fifty years; on a grove of 
poplars or maples, possibly one hundred. 
Show him the old elm on Boston Common 
and its history, and he would say three hun- 
dred. Let him see the old yew in Fountains 
Abbev, and he would sav five hundred. Let 
him look on the old olive-trees that stand at 
the foot of Mount Olivet, and he would add 
an indefinite number of centuries more. Take 
him to the fallen Sequoia Gigantea of Cali- 
fornia, and Mr. Bowles would tell him that 
the least possible age of one of these is one 
thousand three hundred and eighty years, 
and that the mean computation more than 
doubles that amount. A little additional 



142 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

knowledge would considerably change a 
man's estimate of what is possible in the 
life of a tree. Perhaps also of a man. Now 
we must remember how surely all other 
mechanisms than the living organism are 
not only impaired, but ruined by misuse; 
and moreover how even that organism often 
breaks down, and not only so, but transmits 
to the generations to come the effects of the 
misuse, sometimes with accumulations, till 
certain families are abridged of more than 
half their life-time as compared with others, 
and how we inherit the gouts and scrofulas 
of European ancestry; we have but to con- 
sider how better medical and sanitary condi- 
tions have within our own knowledge consider- 
ably raised the average length of a generation ; 
we have also but to consider what a constant 
strain is put by most men if not by all men 
upon the endurance of their vital powers by 
various irregularities, carelessness, if not pos- 
itive a-buse of their systems, and how these 
causes have been in operation for ages upon 
ages in succession, — and I think that instead 
of wondering that the life, now reduced to a 
century at the longest, might in the begin- 
ning, before all these long and terrible de- 
preciating influences had done their work of 
ruin, have lasted indefinitely longer, we shall 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES, 143 

rather say, it could hardly be otherwise. I 
think that from our knowledge of the human 
race in its present conditions no man is com- 
petent to say how long a life was 'intrinsi- 
cally impossible." 

But the most remarkable exhibition of the 
early aflSnities is found in the genealogies of 
the tenth chapter of Genesis. It is a chapter 
that has furnished the basis of a vast amount 
of investigation and called forth a singular 
amount of admiration, being, in Bunsen's lan- 
guage, " the most learned of all ancient docu- 
ments, and the most ancient among the 
learned;" or, as Johannes Von Miiller puts 
it, ''history has its beginning in this table." 
It is a theme not for a part of a lecture or a 
lecture but, as it has been made, for a volume. 
Nothing like it is to be found in ancient his- 
tory. And its antiquity is beyond anything 
but conjecture. In view of all the circum- 
stances we need not be startled at Herder's 
opinion that the central and original register 
goes back to about the time of Peleg and 
the region which he inhabited, in whose time 
"the earth w^as divided," when the various 
races were making their migrations, supple- 
mented, however, in particular lines by the la- 
ter additions, which come down, as Delitzsch 
formerly suggested, to the time of Joshua. 



144 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

Thus, of the progeny of Japheth only two gen- 
erations are given, but of Shem six. And in 
this the line of Heber is traced down to the 
children of Peleg and Joktan, while of Aram 
only one generation is mentioned. But the very 
limitations and omissions in many directions 
are indications of its extreme antiquity. Her- 
der well says, ''The very poverty of this chart 
is its security against being lost or interpo- 
lated," and ''a pledge of its truth." ^^ Thus 
the Chinese do not appear; for in the time of 
Moses they had not apparently attained any 
such prominence as to overcome the obscurity 
of their distance. And in ascribing Chittim, 
i. e., Cyprus (and the neighboring coast and 
islands perhaps) to the line of Javan, or the 
lonians, the writer disregards the Phenician col- 
onization as wholly subordinate to the original 
Greek occupancy of the island as a whole, though 
the name Chittim is perhaps preserved in the 
Citium which was one of the chief Phenician 
cities. Phenicia had not then risen to its com 
mercial influence and power. Indeed the more 
ancient condition of Phenicia is very distinctly 
indicated in the absense of all allusion to Tyre, 
its greatest though later mart, and the mention 
only of the older Sidon as its representative. 
Another indication of the same fact is found 
^^ Herder, ''Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," i. 252, 250. 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 145 

in the disappearance from all subsequent his- 
tory of some prominent branches of the lines. 
Thus among the Shemite race, Eber and Elam 
and Asshur can be traced distinctly in the 
Hebrews, Elamites, Assyrians, Syrians; but 
while Lud is questionable at least, Arphaxad 
has wholly disappeared. So in other cases. 
Meanwhile the striking character of the record 
appears in the circumstance that in all the 
instances in this branch on which modern 
science can form a judgment, viz., three of 
them, it fully coincides with the ancient regis- 
ter in pronouncing them Semitic. So too with 
the Japhethic races, six in the enumeration, the 
latest results coincide in afBrming, in general, 
the affiliation here first announced. It finds in 
Javan, with its subdivisions, the Ionian race; 
in Gomer, the Cymri and allied tribes of vari- 
ous analogous names, corresponding to the Cel 
tic race; in Madai the Medes; in Magog prob 
nbly the Scythian tribes; in Tiras broadly the 
Thracians ; in Tubal and Meshech probably the 
Tibareni and Moschi, that long ago passed away 
without literature or monuments. But the oth- 
ers are the chief races now thoroughly known 
to be affiliated, — the common ancestors of the 
Celts, the Germans, the Sclaves, the Greeks and 
Romans, the Persiansand Hindoos, the great In- 
do-Germanic, Indo-European, or Aryan family. 



146 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Similar in general, thovigh perhaps less dis- 
tinct and complete are the results reached in 
regard to the descendants of Ham. But here 
as throughout the catalogue, the chief difficulty 
lies in fact that these sources of history lie so 
far back of all connected secular history, that 
we lack the means to bridge the chasm. 

But any fuller exposition or even comment 
upon this remarkable record is precluded. 
My end is subserved in calling special atten- 
tion to its character, and, above all, to its bond 
of connection, the bond of universal consan- 
guinity. Nothing like it, as I have said, ap- 
pears in antiquity. On one of the walls at 
Thebes, is an enumeration of certain nations 
and tribes, indeed. But they are few, unre- 
lated, and recorded only as the conquests of 
Earaeses the Great. But here, in the words 
of Dillmann, is " an exhibition of the ultimate 
relationship of all the nations far and near, 
outwardly and inwardly so diverse as the 
weighty thought of this survey. Israel is but 
one member of universal humanity. All men 
and nations are of the same race, the same 
value, and the same consideration, brethren and 
kindred. This Biblical consideration sets out 
from the greatness and entirety of humanity, 
before it turns itself to the history of an indi- 
vidual people, the people of God, and then at 



THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 147 

length by the mouths of the prophets, points 
forward to the end and ultimate goal of this 
several history, the union of all nations in the 
kingdom of God." 

That great principle which the illustrious 
Hungarian exile made his grand text as he 
traversed this land in 1852 — the '* Solidarity " 
of the Nations — was enunciated thousands of 
years earlier, and in a higher form, in the an- 
cient table of the nations, in the Pentateuch. 



LECTURE FIFTH. 

THE EARLY MOVEMENTS OF THE NATIONS. 

Thb same record that affirms and traces the 
original unity of the race, also gives lis the 
oldest and for a long period, yes even now, 
the only account of its dispersion, its early 
locations, migrations and movements. We 
are in a track otherwise untrodden. It is 
but recently that we have been able fully 
to test the correctness and value of this an- 
cient source of information. A solitary state- 
ment indicates the tendency begun before the 
Flood, in the wandering of Cain to a region 
of which we have no further knowledge than 
the fact. Some writers — even so respectable 
and conservative an author as Dr. Dawson ^ — 
have dropped the suggestion that in some of 
the older stone relics of Europe, and in case 
of the larger men, like those of Cro-magnon 
and Mentone, we may have remains of an- 
tediluvian times. In some cases the cave- 



1 ( 



< Origin of the Earth," p. 299. 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 149 

dwellers appear to have been destroyed by 
floods. Other writers (as Bunsen) have 
called attention to the alleged fact that 
neither the Chinese nor the Egyptians (al- 
most alone) have any tradition of the Del- 
uge.^ In Egypt certainly this would not be 
remarkable, when we consider the nature of 
the old Egyptian inscriptions, — in no case his- 
torical or traditional. They delineate simply 
current affairs, or are at most tables of royal 
ancestry. But it is not strictly true either of 
China or Egypt. China records a local deluge 
at a time differently reckoned as 2062 or 2278 
B. c.^ Egypt exhibits in the tomb of Seti I. 
the record of a destruction of mankind by the 
gods in all respects parallel to that of the 
Pentateuch, except that it was not by a flood 
— a fact well explained by the Abbe Vigoroux 
thus, that 'inasmuch as an inundation was for 
them riches and life, they denied the tradi- 
tion; the race was destroyed in another mode, 
and the inundation became to them the mark 
that the anger of Ea was appeased."* All 
speculations on antediluvian races, however, 
are in the present state of our knowledge 
superfluous. Nor w^ill I pause to discuss the 

2 *' Egypt's Place," iii. 379. 

3 Lenormant, ''Orig." p. 383. 
* lb. p. 454 



150 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

question how that deluge was brought about; 
whether, according to the suggestion of Hugh 
Miller and others, by the gradual subsidence 
and emergence of a limited area in Asia Minor, 
say with a radius of 400 miles from a center 
near Mosul, and thus extending into the Eux- 
ine, Caspian and Mediterranean, whereby the 
inrushing waters would destroy the whole 
race, not yet dispersed beyond that region; 
or, with Dawson and others, by the great 
and general submergence which followed 
the glacial epoch, and, by general admis- 
sion, preceded the historical era, and of 
which traces exist alike in North and South 
America, in Asia and in Europe.^ Time may 
possibly decide the question. Enough if we 
may, after the flood, look in upon the disinte- 
grations and the crystallizations of the races, 
in their formative condition and the compara- 
tive youth of the world. Nothing could be 
more interesting than such a study were we 
able to present it in full. But alas, the race, 
like the individual, when it arrives at the 
stage for such investigations, has so far re- 
ceded from its infantile condition as to have 
lost the recollection of its infant experience 
and history. 

In the Pentateuch alone are we permitted 
s Southall, "Kecent Origin of Man," pp. 210, 283, 287. 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS, 151 

to take such a survey, however limited. Let 
us turn its unique pages and read what we 
may in its brief hints. 

The earHest post-diluvian indication of 
national movement is found in the statement 
(Gen. ix. 19), *' These [Shem, Ham and Japheth] 
are the three sons of Noah, and of them was 
the whole earth overspread." Next comes 
the announcement (Gen. x. 2) that one of 
Eber's sons was named Peleg, '*for in his days 
the earth was divided." Here the simplest 
interpretation is substantially that of Fiirst 
who says that '^ here ^?.^? stands for ^^? ''5^% 
inhabitants of the earth." A part of the pro- 
cess, as actually begun, is narrated in the next 
chapter in connection with the tower of Babel, 
(Chap. xi.). Here we read first of a move- 
ment, probably not ^^from the east" but "east- 
icard^'' as it is admissible according both to 
Gesenius and Ewald to render the phrase, 
and as Tuch, Delitzsch, Knobel, Wright, Bun- 
sen and others agree (just as in Gen. xiii. 11; 
iii. 24; xii. 8; ii. 8). It is view^ed as east- 
ward from the writer's standpoint in Pales- 
tine, to whom the people of Mesopotamia were 
" sons of the east" (Dillmann), or as it lay, if 
southerly, also easterly from Armenia (Knobel). 
The name of the land Shinar, lying eastward, 
has been within these few vears identified 



152 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

(by Lenormant and Sayce) with the Sumir 
of the Babylonian inscriptions, and is the old- 
est name, as well as the latest discovered. 

From this region we are told God accom- 
plished a still greater movement, — a scatter- 
ing ''abroad upon the face of the earth" — 
that which was foretokened in the narrative 
of Noah and described in the '' table of the 
nations." The immediate occasion is given 
as tlie confusion of tongues, whereby in a 
supernatural way was precipitated the change 
that in due time was sure to come through 
natural causes. The separation, too, would 
have been in process of time necessitated. 
Indeed the movement to the land of Shinar 
has the appearance of being the first step of 
that inevitable movement which has been so 
largely characteristic of early national life: 
increase of population compelling dispersion, 
— a swarming of the old hive followed by the 
pressing and crowding of each last comer upon 
the heels of its predecessor, till, as in the Aryan 
movement westward, the Celts were arrested 
only by the distant shores of the ocean and 
the islands, and still pressed from behind ; or 
as in this country the older occupants were 
driven steadily southward. 

In this process the distance of the journey- 
ings, the incessant changes and abandonments 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 153 

of all accumulated property, and recedings 
from the source of supply and from the radi- 
ating centers of progress, easily account for 
the debased conditions of life under which 
they are often found. Emigration, when in- 
cessant, uncorrected and unresisted, tends to 
barbarism. Those tribes that earliest found 
and retained their near and permanent abodes, 
other things being equal, earliest developed 
and best retained the highest forms of life 
and art. Such was the case in Chaldea, 
Babylonia, India, with their fertile and pro- 
ductive plains and mighty streams, and, above 
all, Egypt with its marvellous position close 
along the banks of its matchless river of clock- 
work overflow, and its wonderful facilities and 
resources, and means of luxury, and also along 
the eastern and northern parts of the Medi- 
terranean, where everything invited to com- 
merce, to invention and production — climate, 
soil, minerals and harbors, especially in Phe 
nicia with her two noble harbors in conve 
nient nearness to the trade and civilization 
of the more ancient East and to the new 
products of the rising West. The tribes that 
drove each other through the length of Europe, 
through its grim forests and over its moun 
tains, across its rushing streams, and through 
its winter snows, never developed the higher 



154 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

traits of human life till they too at last be- 
came stationary, and that was only after they 
had nearly extinguished what may have been 
the settled civilization of their earlier home. 

Our celebrated table (Genesis x.) shows us 
something of this process of dispersion, and 
would show us still more, were we in a con- 
dition more fully to interpret it. But unfor- 
tunately it is ancient even beyond our reach. 
Some things, however, stand out very distinct. 
We have no indication in the Pentateuch 
indeed what direction the race of Gomer 
took. Ezekiel, however, brings them '*from 
the north quarter" (xxxviii. 2-6), and we can 
only find them in the wide-spread names of 
the Kimmerii, Cymri, and Cambri, in Crimea 
and Cumberland, etc. But Javan or the loni- 
ans are distinctly relegated to ''the isles," or 
rather maritime regions (which the word in- 
cludes) ''of the Gentiles," and the specifica- 
tions of the book include the Eolians (Eli- 
shah), Tarshish (propably in Cilicia, though 
some say Spain — Andalusia and Murcia), Cy- 
prus (Chittim) and perhaps the Rhodians, 
(Dodanim or Rodanim), — to which is added, 
to indicate their still wider dispersion, ''every 
one after his own tongue, after their families, in 
their nations" (v. 5). Indeed the vast spread 
and conspicuous historic influences and activ- 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 155 

ity of the several Japhethic races, of which 
Javan was foremost, was even more emphat- 
ically announced in the utterance of Noah, 
'' God shall enlarge — make wide room for — 
Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of 
Shem"; as wide room as from India, not only 
to the western borders of Europe, but to the 
western borders of America, and now back 
again to the East, round the globe, and long 
ago appropriating all the spiritual blessings 
that dwelt in the tents of Shem. And whether 
any choose to call this history or prophecy, it is 
in either case alike distinct. 

The direction early taken by the several 
races is to a considerable extent indicated 
only by assigning the name of the region to 
the race. Thus Madai, Sidon, Mizraim re- 
spectively designate the Medes and Persians, 
the Phenicians, and Egyptians. Here SiJon 
represents the race of which it was the early 
prominent seat of activity, being mentioned 
in Joshua as already "great Sidon" (Josh. 
xi. 8). 

And in denominating Sidon ''the firstborn 
of Canaan," the narrative records the great 
historic fact that at a period estimated (by 
many) to be some four thousand years ago, 
''a tribe speaking a Semitic tongue abandoned 
the nomad habits of their ancestors, and build- 



156 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

ing some rude huts beside a creek, sheltered 
by an inland breakwater, took to the sea, 
and called themselves ^Sidonians' or 'Fisher- 
men/ It was a memorable day for human- 
ity, when the first colonizing and commercial 
power which the world had seen, launched its 
rude craft tentatively on the Mediterranean. 
On that day the arts and culture of the East 
may be said to have set out on their journey 
to the West, and the long process to have be- 
gun by which the sceptre was transferred from 
the primeval * river kingdoms ' to the republics 
of the Inland Sea, and from these passed over 
to the 'ocean empires' of modern times." ^ It 
was far, far back — it may be five or seven 
hundred years prior to the greatness of this 
''Rock" city Tyre (1500 b. c.) which is known 
neither to the Iliad nor the Odyssey — two 
hundred years more than that earlier than 
the occupation of Carthage. Nay, it is supposed 
that even while Israel was in Egypt "^ the Si- 
donian mariners, beginning to be crowded by 
the early Greeks, their pupils and rivals, guided 
by the pole-star, boldly struck out for the riches 
of Spain, the tin of Britain and the amber of 
the Baltic. 

How remarkably this narrative antedates all 
other historic knowledge and fills its gaps, ap- 

6 '' Edinburgh Eevisw," Jan. 1882. ' 15. 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 157 

pears somewhat conspicuously in regard to 
]\Iizraim or the Egyptians, who are here made 
to radiate from this central stock in Asia 
through Noah's son Ham. Now ''the Egyp- 
tians themselves [ancient as they are] appear 
to have lost the recollection of their origin."^ 
Diodorus would refer them to Ethiopia. But 
the disclosures of the monuments make Etlii- 
opia to have been colonized from Egypt.^ The 
study of the early status and the language 
brings us to this latest conclusion : ''The Egyp- 
tian race in its ethnological characteristics is 
connected with the white population of early 
Asia : the Egyptian language by its grammat- 
ical form with the language called Semitic." ^^ 
Brugsch Bey declares it incontestably proven 
that the Egyptians originated in Asia. "They 
must have belonged to the great Caucasian 
race. With some other nations apparently they 
form a third branch of it, the Cushite, differ- 
ent in certain peculiarities from the branches 
called Pelasgic and Semitic.^^ As Maspero 
expresses himself more fully: "While the 
Egyptian language, sooner cultivated, was ar- 
rested in its development, the Semitic tongues 
continued thus through long ages, so that if 
there is evidently a relation of stock between 

8 Maspero, **Histoire Ancienne," p. 13. 9 15. p. 14. 
10 76. p. 16. 11 "Histoire d'Egypte," pp. 5, 6. 



158 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

the language of Egypt and those of Asia, the 
relation is distant enough to leave to this 
people a distant physiognomy.^^ He calls it 
'' proto-Semitic." This would bring them into 
tlie relation indicated in the Pentateuch, early 
emigrants from Asia and connected in lan- 
guage with at least the Canaanites, according 
to the received views, including the Pheni- 
cians. I will not follow Maspero (after De 
Eouge) in the designation of the several de- 
scendants or tribes of Mizraim to their respect- 
ive localities from the hieroglyphic records — 
as when he makes the Ludim to be the Eoutou 
or Loudou, or Egyptians proper, Anaraim the 
Anou or inhabitants of On of the north (Heli- 
opolis) and On of the south (Hermonthis;, 
Lehabim the Lybians, Natuphim No-Phtah 
on the north of Memphis, the Pathrusim, the 
Pa-to-res, midlanders between Memphis and 
the first cataract.^^ These may be considered 
as too precarious, however striking. 

Again the Canaanite tribes in other por- 
tions of the Pentateuch are located in detail, 
and they are found scattered over the whole 
region from Sidon to Gaza, and on the east to 
the Ghor at an unknown point, Lasha. Here 
we find our only distinct knowledge of a fam- 
ily of tribes — including the warlike Kheta or 
12 <*Histoire Ancienne," p. 17. ^^ /5. p. 14. 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 159 

Hittites of the Egyptian monuments — once 
numerous and powerful, who fought well for 
their strongholds, till they were overpowered 
Dy a mightier destiny, and disappeared with- 
out a vestige, unless it be found in the troglo- 
dyte caves of the south, in certain names not 
yet displaced, and perhaps in the language 
they may have imparted to the long tolerated 
and afterward dominant Hebrew race, and in 
certain few inscriptions about the Orentes, not 
yet deciphered. 

One of the most noteworthy statements of 
this earliest record is that in regard to Nim- 
rod — so remote indeed that though identified 
by George Smith with the Izdhubar of the 
Babylonian tablets, the latter is by others 
(Sayce and Lenormant) remanded to the 
sphere of legends. He was a Cushite and 
''the beginning of his kingdom was Babel 
and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land 
of Shinar. And out of that land he went 
forth and builded Nineveh and the city of 
Rehoboth and Calah and Resen between Nin- 
eveh and Calah, the same is a great city." 
It is not my purpose to disentangle the con- 
struction and details of this brief and difficult 
statement, but to notice the career of early 
conquest and construction thus briefly indi- 
cated. This rearing of certain great cities in 



160 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Shinar by a Hamitic, Cushite monarch who 
also pushed his way into Asshur, which re- 
gion however was assigned to the family of 
Sliem, and from which Abram actually origi- 
nated — presents not only a record of early 
national enterprise, but a mingling of nation- 
al elements, not disentangled till in very 
recent times, and now perhaps but in part. 
But thus much appears to be settled. The 
name Shinar is the same with the Sumir of 
the inscriptions, now revived in the name 
applied to the Sumirian language and race, 
which is also by some identified with, and 
by others distinguished from, the Accadian, 
and belongs to a Scythian or Turanian race, 
which seems by modern researches to have 
preceded the Assyrian and Chaldean races 
in these regions. They were the original 
proprietors of the cuneiform alphabet. The 
latest researches also show, by their side or 
as their successors on this soil, a powerful 
Cushite race as set forth in the sacred narra- 
tive.^* But at an early date it is also certain 
that a Semitic race, represented by the in- 
scriptions in the Assyrian language, was 
found on the soil of Chaldea, whom some 
(Geo. Smith) have supposed to have mas- 
tered the earlier Turanians even before this 

14 Maspero, ''Histoire," p. 145. 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 161 

Cushite invasion. It is difficult to determine 
relative dates. But the fundamental fact of 
the record has emerged in recent times, that 
the three great families, Shem, Ham and Ja- 
pheth, were early and strangely mingled on 
this ancient territory. It was hinted at long 
after by the Chaldean historian Berosus: 
'* There were at first a great number of men 
of difierent races who had colonized to Chal- 
dea."^^ And this early mingling of races in 
Chaldea in part accounts for the difficulties 
that overhang the question of the so-called 
" Semitic " tongues, which evidently were 
spoken by some non-Semitic nations. The 
complication would seem to have been in- 
creased or continued by subsequent proximi- 
ties or interminglings of the Semitic and 
Hamitic races, as in Palestine, Northern Af- 
rica, and perhaps in Arabia and Abyssinia ^"^ 
— the record in the first two cases being also 
furnished in the Pentateuch. In the city 
Accad remains a relic of the name by which 
one portion of the early Turanian people and 
their speech were known — Accadian; and 
as some aver in its significance '' mountain " 
(as contrasted with Sumir, ''plain") a remi- 
niscence of the mountainous region of Ar- 

^5 Tompkins, *' Times of Abraham," p. 7. 
16 15. p. 52. 



162 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

menia which was their still earlier home/ 
Let me only add that of the ancient Erech 
we have the well-known primitive ruins in 
the mounds of Warka. 

It was from this land of Chaldea, south of 
Babylonia, and from its ancient city of Ur, 
now identified beyond reasonable doubt with 
Mugheir, that the most eventful migration 
took place that the world has seen — that of 
Abram, the Hebrew. With him came up the 
spiritual hopes and destinies of the nations. 
It is not impossible that the aggressions of 
Elam, of which the same record gives the 
oldest information, may have enforced the 
divine call ''to get him forth." He followed 
up the Euphrates by the route so common in 
ancient times, the earliest known traveller 
over that famous route, in preference to a 
journey across the difficult western desert, 
and for some unknown reason he paused in 
Charran. The time appears from many in- 
dications to have been one of very general 
unrest among the nations. And while he was 
in Charran, it has been shown that the host of 
'' Chedorlaomer and his tributaries must have 
marched through to their distant conquests," 
and '' Abram's eyes probably looked upon the 
long array of Elam, Larsa, Shinar and Goiim, 

1' Leuormant, "Chaldean Magic," p. 360. 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 163 

with which thirteen years later he was so 
suddenly to be engaged in deadly conflict." ^^ 
We follow him next down through the land 
of Syria over the great route, now first men- 
tioned in history, by Damascus, (also first 
appearing here and represented in his stew- 
ard, Eliezer of Damascus), passing " through 
the land," the oldest Palestinian traveller on 
record, pausing at Shechem at the plain or 
rather the oaks of a place now emerging into 
history, and again at a point between Bethel 
and Ai, and so onward south. When the 
famine finds him, he pushes on over that im- 
memorial route, now first indicated, through 
the south country to Egypt, and gives us the 
first historic glimpse of the civilization of 
that mighty people. We find him, and after- 
ward his son, in the Negeb, or South country, 
of which we know through them and through 
those remarkable ruins and relics alone, that 
it was once filled with cultivation and popu- 
lation. It had already received its geographic 
name Negeb, which appears a little later as 
" Nekeb " among the conquests of Thothmes 
III. With him once more we stand at Bethel, 
and with Lot we look from the sightly emi- 
nence east of Bethel over the land of Palestine, 
and see the fertility of the tropical plain below, 
in its wicked civilization. With Abram's eye 
18 Tompkins, p. 58. 



164 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

of faith we also look from the place where he 
was, '' northward and southward and eastward 
and westward," over the land of distant prom- 
ise. The whole scene stands out before us, 
by glimpses, in connection with this personal 
history of those times; later described in the 
same Pentateuch as '' a good land, a land of 
brooks of water, of fountains and depths that 
spring out of the valleys and hills, a land 
of wheat and barley and vines and fig-trees 
and pomegranates, a land of oil olive and 
honey " (Deut. viii. 7); now in Abraham's time 
a pastoral country in great measure, sprinkled 
with flocks and herds, and traversed already 
by a great travelled route from north to south, 
tending to Egypt, apparently with its stages 
and halting places even then somewhat as 
now. The whole scene is before our eyes. 
Here and there as at Hebron, Shechem, Jeru- 
salem, some tribe had made its central seat, 
probably as yet with little show of fortifica- 
tion. Of one of these, Hebron, curiously 
enough, we have the very date given, '' seven 
years older than Zoan of Egypt." The main 
portion of the territory would seem to have 
been otherwise then open for the unhindered 
passage of a military force. But the chief 
permanent population was apparently outside 
the mountainous centre of Palestine — along 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 165 

the coast around Sidon, in the Ghor where 
were Hazezon Tamar and the cities of the plain 
— Sodom being even a city with *' a gate " — 
beyond the Jordan from Ashteroth Karnaim 
to Mt. Seir and El Paran, as well as about 
Damascus north, and around Beersheba, in 
Gerar and the region south of Palestine. 
They could, as at Kirjath Arba, convey land 
by regular sale *' with the trees thereon." 
Here and there the eye falls on oak or tere- 
vinth groves, as at Shechem, Mamre and El 
Paran. Beersheba may have been as desti- 
tute of trees then as to-day; for there Abram 
planted a grove or a tree, — an act which 
as clearly distinguishes him from the Arab 
Sheikh of Dean Stanley, as did the wells 
which he and Abimelech dug at Beersheba. 
In this bird's-eye glimpse of the location of 
the nations in Palestine, there comes before 
us one remarkable character, — a veritable 
priest of the Most High God, — one who, out- 
side the line of Abram had so kept alive the 
sacred fire that Abram himself was blessed 
by him and paid him tithes. It is a strange- 
ly suggestive apparition; without recorded 
father or mother, beginning of priestly years 
or end of days, he passes before us like a bird 
darting through a lighted room, from the 
dark into the dark again 



166 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

In Abram's favorable reception in Egypt we 
perhaps get a glimpse of the Asiatic relation 
already begun in the conquest by the Hyksos 
or Shepherd Kings of Egypt. For Brugsch 
Bey now derives these Hyksos from Elam and 
Media, averring that he has found the Egyp- 
tain name of '^Menti'' applied to those locali- 
ties. The national departure had taken place 
already. And if we suppose that the oppres- 
sive influences in their own neighboring home 
had sent forth these singular adventurers to 
Egypt, we can understand the sympathetic 
bond which secured the patriarch an honorable 
Avelcome in Egypt and a safe departure, though 
rightly rebuked. The same tendency to Egypt 
and kindly reception which is here narrated 
is also illustrated in that famous picture of 
the Asiatic company of thirty-seven Amu hon- 
orably received in the days of Osirtasen II., 
and whom Lepsius has perhaps rightly de- 
scribed as the ''predecessors of the Hyksos," 
a ''mighty Hyksos family who pray to be re- 
ceived into the blessed land, and whose de- 
scendants perhaps opened the gates of Egypt 
to the Semitic conquerors allied to them by 
race."^^ This could not have been relatively 
many years — possibly two centuries — before 
Abram's own reception. 

^9 Lepsius, "Letters from Egypt," p. 112. 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS, 167 

Meantime from the Egyptian side of this 
migratory and predatory movement, Abram's 
history once more carries us to the eastern 
side, from whence the tribes were thus ah-eady 
crowding on their neighbors. Some years 
later — we know not how many — we find the 
king of Elam and his confederates enforcing 
a previous tribute upon the distant tribes of 
Palestine. We will not pause to inquire 
whether the name Chedorlaomer, can be iden- 
tified with Kudur-Mabuk, or Kudur-Lagamar, 
as Mr. Tompkins still supposes. But of these 
nations thus allied we find the king of Elam 
now at the head, as the liege lord and master; 
for it was he whom the five cities of Palestine 
had served for twelve years and against whom 
they had now rebelled. Accordingly we find 
it recorded in the annals of Assurbanipal, king 
of Assyria, that only in his day had he, the 
king of Assyria, by conquest of Elam brought 
back from Susa an image of Nana which 
an Elamite monarch (Kudur-nankhundi) had 
carried ofi" from Babylonia 1635 years before, 
{. e., near three hundred years prior to Abram's 
emigration. It had been a long-established 
ascendancy and aggressiveness of Elam and at 
length in Abram's time it had swept across 
the desert into Syria and Palestine. With this 
powerful Elamite king was now associated, as 



168 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

his inferior and ally only, the king of Shinar. 
Arioch king of EUasar was also of the com- 
pany. And, curiously enough, not only has 
Ms capital city Larsa (now Senkereh on the 
east of the Euphrates) been identified, but 
Eriaku, the same with the Hebrew Arioch, is 
found to be the son of Kudur-Mabuk and to 
have dwelt in Larsa. The fourth of these 
royal aggressors. Tidal king of "Goiim," is less 
definitely localized either in the narrative or 
the inscriptions, Guti or Gutium, both of which 
sources favor the idea that his monarchy was 
over less consolidated tribes to the north. But 
in striking correspondence to and explanation 
of this consecutive narrative, the inscriptions 
disclose great expeditions of Kudur-Mabuk 
and Arioch, with conquests in Syria, whereby 
the former attained the title '4ord of Martu " 
i. e., of the god of the West; and Eawlinson, 
Sayce and Lenormant all bring the date singu- 
larly close to the time of Abraham (Rawlinson 
2100 B. c, Sayce 2000, Lenormant ''approxi- 
mately to the time of Abraham." ^® This tale 
of conquest might apply to the time twelve 
years before when the valley kings were made 
tributary, probably in the greater campaign 
through Syria as well as Palestine. For in 
the second campaign a more humiliating fate 
awaited them. 

20 Tompkins, *«Times of Abraham," p. 180. 



• EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 169 

We follow these fighting nations this second 
time as they come, evidently in force, over the 
commercial and military track, ascending the 
valley of the Euphrates and crossing it at Bir, 
or more likely at Jerabolus, the ancient Car- 
chemish, pushing south-v^^esterly over the deep 
valley of the Orontes at ''the entrance of Ha- 
math " (twice mentioned in our Pentateuch) — 
that ancient place where are found strange in- 
scriptions perhaps of the veritable Hittite race. 
Passing by Damascus, out of our sight, they 
emerge on the east side of Jordan in Bashan, 
striking first the Rephaim at an unknown point, 
then the Zuzim, — wholly lost to history — at 
Ham, probably Hamitat, just east of the Dead 
Sea, then Shaveh Kiriathaim, '' the plain of the 
two cities," now also lost out of knowledge un- 
less the name of the tribe of Emims be found 
in the travels of Mohar, '' Mat-amim," land of 
Emim. Then we find them at Seir among 
the Horites, the troglodytes. They had taken 
what is since, and may have been then, the 
great commercial route to Arabia. Still they 
pushed on down along the route of the Ghor 
to El Paran, not now definitely known, but " by 
the wilderness." What was their aim here? 
The old Egyptian mines, long wrought already? 
We can only guess. But they returned by 
Kadesh — whether the Ain Kades of Williams, 



170 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

the Ain el Weibeh of Eobinson, or some still 
■unknown place. It was a long expedition, 
and must have called for no little skill in the 
arrangement, as well as vigor in the prose- 
cution. And now having cut off all the sur- 
rounding sources of help, they struck what 
we may suppose were the ricli cities of the 
plain — for here, at a later date, in Jericho it 
was that Achan hid his prize, the wedge of 
gold and the goodly Babylonish garment or 
mantle. They carried off the spoil. And 
here the very geography and condition of the 
region is put on record. It was a valley, and 
bitumen pits were there — where bitumen still 
is found — and a mountain region for the sur- 
vivors to escape. 

When Abram joined himself to Aner and 
Eshcol to retake his nephew Lot, by a sort of 
poetic justice he was arming himself against 
the aggressors that had oppressed his own 
native land of Chaldea. And in his military 
tactics, he showed himself worthy to have 
been reared — as he was — in the midst of war- 
like times. From the opposite range of hills, 
no doubt — the bold headlands of Naphtali, 
south of lake Huleh, — he could, as he ap- 
proached, see the enemy resting in security 
and carousing over his spoil. By an almost 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 171 

Napoleonic promptness and skill he advanced 
upon them in detachments, struck them by 
night, and routed them beyond Damascus. 

With this thorough discomfiture of the 
former chief oriental monarch of the time, of 
which, of course, no record ever will be found 
in the boastful inscriptions of Babylonia or 
Assyria, the public movements in and around 
the old hive of the nations are left in silence 
for many centuries. For although later in the 
life of Abraham, and again through twenty 
years of the life of Jacob, we are permitted to 
look into the heart of Padan Aram, it is ex- 
clusively a vision of rural and family scenes, 
without a reference to the monarchy or the 
government, except as Laban asserts in one 
instance a controlling custom of the country. 

Not so meanwhile in other lands. We have 
here the only narrative concerning the origin 
of that race that have left their sole memen- 
toes in the forsaken ruins of Moab. Here also 
the early days of that powerful race that once 
warred upon Judea, pillaged her capital, by 
the hand of its Edomite monarch, Herod, 
struck at the life of the infant Jesus, and 
left its weird city Petra to be discovered in 
our own day in the cleft of the rocks, in ghast- 
ly desolation. 

Here also alone are exhibited the great 



172 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Arab race in their origin, their characteristics, 
their early central location, and their long 
and peculiar history. The sons of Ishmael 
had their dwelling '' from Havilah unto Shur 
that is before Egypt as thou goest toward As- 
syria," — where we observe the distinct impli- 
cation of early travel and communication be- 
tween the two lands, — in the region where 
the traveller now looks upon the sons of Ish- 
mael in their purest, almost primitive type. 
The roving Bedouin to-day fulfils that mar- 
vellously descriptive prophetic utterance, '' He 
shall be a wild-ass man; his hand shall be 
against every man and every man's hand 
against him ; and he shall dwell in the pres- 
ence of his brethren." And from Havilah to 
Shur you behold him to-day, as roving and 
untamed as the wild ass, and dwelling in the 
presence of his brethren. '' Until to-day the 
Ishmaelites are in undisturbed, free posses- 
sion of the great peninsula lying between 
the Euphrates, the Isthmus of Suez and the 
Bed Sea, from whence they have spread over 
wide districts in Northern Africa and South- 
ern Asia" (Delitzsch). Ishmael has also be- 
come, according to this prophetic "utterance, a 
great nation, and more than ^'twelve princes" 
have sprung from his stock. ** Every addi- 
tion to our knowledge, of Arabia and its 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 173 

inhabitants," says Kalisch, ''confirms more 
strongly the Biblical statements. While they 
have carried their arms beyond their native 
lands, and ascended more than one hundred 
thrones, they were never subjected to the Per- 
sian empire. The Assyrian and Babylonian 
kings had a transitory power over small por- 
tions of their tribes. Here the ambition of 
Alexander the Great and his successors re- 
ceived an insuperable check, and a Eoman 
expedition in the time of Augustus totally 
failed. The Bedouins have remained essen- 
tially unaltered since the times of the He- 
brews and the Greeks." Is it not one hun- 
dred and twenty millions that speak the 
Arabic tongue to-day? 

Passing at a bound over some two hundred 
years from Abraham's time, the Pentateuch 
opens up another panorama of historic vision. 
I will not pause to dwell upon the unfolding 
of the one central people, and the sharp de- 
fining of the whole career and institutions 
that have so ineffaceably stamped their in- 
tense nationality to the present day. Few 
men consider what an irreparable loss to the 
world's records would be the obliteration of 
that long and eventful history from the 
world's on-goings, or with what singular and 
absolutely unparalleled definiteness it is given 



17^ HISTORY IX THE TEXTATEUCH, 

118, from its incipient stages. And not only 
as a clear record of a wonderful national 
growth and source of moral illumination to 
the world is it a xTr}ua k^ txeiy but meanwhile 
how its pages beam with life, and what 
strange personages walk across its scenes in 
all their distinctness of delineation : the mighty 
and majestic Father of the faithful, the wary 
and versatile head of the twelve tribes, ripen- 
ino- at last to venerableness and beautv, the 
Reckless Joseph and the colossal law-giver, 
— how they stand out like sunbeams on our 
sight. 

And as we follow their journeyings we are 
still enveloped with the movements of the 
nations. We fall upon the line of early in- 
ternational trade at Dothan, where the ]^Iidi- 
anite or Ishmaelitish merchants are movino- 
towards luxurious E^-vpt with their camels, 
bearing spices and balm and myrrh, perhaps 
for the kitchen, the toilet, the medicine chest, 
and the tomb, and where thev pause bv the 
wav to buv cheap a slave for the house of 
**the Captain of tlie guard." In Egypt we 
may not pause to look around upon the vivid 
scenes of sumptuous court life here delineated, 
ages before they emerged upon modern sight 
from the tombs. But we get clear hints of 
the great national movements of which we 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 175 

are in search, — hints quite as significant as 
would be more detailed statements. The ele- 
vation of a foreigner such as Joseph to a 
high office, suggests the fact of Egypt being- 
then in the hands of foreign invaders, the 
Hyksos; while the solicitude to provide the 
IsraeHtes a home in Goshen, remote from 
the old native Egyptian population, and be- 
cause *' every shepherd is an abomination to 
the Egyptians," suggests the smouldering and 
growing hatred of that dynasty, that only 
waited for its time under Ahmes to drive 
them forever from the land. The reiterated 
intimation to the ten brethren, '' Nay, ye are 
spies; to see the nakedness of the land ye are 
come," hints at a growing sense of insecurity 
and governmental suspicion, strongly aroused 
and fully justified. 

When at length, long after Joseph's death, 
another king or dynasty arose which knew 
not Joseph, we are reminded at once of that 
native dynasty of Memphis to whom the event- 
ful story of Joseph with his relations at On 
was unknown and certainly uncared for. And 
when after the lapse of centuries, the children 
of Israel are ground down with their labors on 
the strongholds of Egypt, we are reminded of 
that line of fortresses which Seti I. and Rameses 
II. found it needful to string along the eastern 



176 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

border of Egypt. For the intermediate con- 
quests of the great warrior, Thotmes III. had 
long passed by, and Rameses, with all his boast- 
ing of victories, had roused enemies whom he 
feared. And when the sceptre passed or was 
to pass into the hands of the feeble Meneptha, 
we can well understand those recorded appre- 
hensions '' lest tliey [the Israelites] multiply, 
and it come to pass that ^vhen there falleth 
out any war they join also unto our enemies and 
fight against us." We see also the explana- 
tion of that great body of troops with which, 
in its military but weakened condition, the 
monarch found it needful to stand always 
provided, and which at a day's warning was 
in readiness to follow on the track of Israel. 
The horsemen and chariots speak of a great 
national change since the days of camels and 
asses — since the time of Abraham. Possibly 
also in the children of Israel's march out of 
Egypt in orderly array, D''C^^n, and in the di- 
vision on the march into thousands and hun- 
dreds with their captains (Num. xiv. 31) — into 
regiments and companies with their regular 
commanders, — we are to recognize an echo 
of the military discipline that now filled the 
once peaceful kingdom, as it does Germany 
to-day, and that responded to the warlike 
movements now thoroughly aroused and set' 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 177 

ting toward the ultimately doomed country 
which was to be the spoil of the nations. 

And on the march of Israel we encounter a 
changed state of affairs from the day when 
not only did the ten brothers pass quietly 
over the old caravan road, that even a solitary 
woman had once attempted alone with her 
child, Ishmael. For this great host were de- 
liberately turned toward the Eed Sea instead 
of the shorter way '' through the land of the 
Philistines" to Canaan, "lest peradventure the 
people repent w4ien they see war, and they re- 
turn to Egypt" (Ex. xiii. 17). The change 
was great indeed. The powerful Amalekites 
encounter them desperately on the way, al- 
thougji the Egyptian forces at the mines 
seem not to have molested them, and vic- 
tory was gained for Israel only after a hard- 
fought battle. Edom also bristled with war- 
like preparations and defiance. \A^hen the 
misguided nation would have pushed their 
way north from Kadesh, they were driven 
back in great discomfiture by the Amale- 
kites; and who can tell but that the oldest 
portion of the ruined fortresses on the top of 
Meshrifeh may be part of the stronghold of 
Zephath, or Sebaita " on the hill top," from 
which these '' Canaanites smote them even 
unto Hormah." When at length the weary 



178 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

journey had brought the nation by a circu- 
itous route upon the flank of the promised land, 
even here were new and strange preparations. 
Jericho was now enclosed with its walls. The 
hills of Palestine were covered with strong- 
holds, and filled with fighting men. And ir 
was only after a long and bitter struggle of 
conquest that the warrior Joshua rested on 
his arms, and the blessings from Gerizim and 
the curses from Ebal came swelling and thun- 
dering over the heads of the people as they 
stood awe-stricken in the vale of Shechem be- 
low ; and the nation had peace, although many 
of its surrounding foes still remained to be 
thorns in its side. 

Thus striking in themselves, significant in 
their relations, and eventful in their issues, are 
the national movements recorded in this an- 
cient history. We catch, not a glimpse, but 
a clear and steady look into scenes and events 
so far away as to be completely lost out of 
sight. We gaze on the dead past and it comes 
to life. It is as though through the vacant 
space we point some great telescope toward a 
seeming blank and there rises before us a new 
unseen planet, not offering us a dreary range 
of extinct volcanoes and waterless plains, but 
filled with verdure and activity, w^ith living 
men and women engaged in all their daily 



EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 179 

round. Scenes of terror, of pathos and of joy; 
the march of armies, the clash of arms, the 
shout of the victor, and the cry of the van- 
quished; the voice of the bridegroom and the 
lament of the widowed and the defiance of tlie 
criminal; the stern command of the mighty 
despot and the beating of the poor downtrod- 
den slave ; the firm tread of the individual hero, 
the quiet footfall of the moving caravans, the 
tramp of the nations as they march to their 
early and perhaps their later homes, the din 
and bustle of a young world hurrying hither 
and thither with struggle and confusion and 
strife, come reverberating down the distant 
centuries as clear and fresh, and yet as softened 
too, as the mingled sounds from some village 
below rise through the evening air to the ear 
of the wanderer, as he pauses to listen on the 
neighboring height. 



LECTURE SIXTH. 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 



It would seem to be hundreds of years, and 
yet it is less than forty, since even so good 
a scholar as Prof Norton ^ of Harvard College 
could publish to the world his doubts, after 
Gesenius and De Wette, whether the art of 
alphabetical writing was known, or so far ad- 
vanced in the time of Moses as to admit of 
his being the author of the Pentateuch. On 
the contrary, the date of tlie discovery recedes 
beyond all knowledge, and disappears in the 
mist. In Egypt the cautious Wilkinson finds 
the hieroglyphic writing upwards of 2500 years 
B. c, and passing into the hieratic about 2240 
B. c. ; Lepsius, with larger numbers, speaks of 
a "perfectly formed system and a universal 
habit of writing between three and four thou- 
sand years before Christ." In Chaldea the 
cuneiform inscriptions ascend to at least the 

I Norton's ''Genuineness of the Gospels," vol. ii. Note 
D., p. c. Second Ed., 1848. 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 181 

time of King Lig-bagas, assigned by some 
(H. C. Torakins) to 2700, and by Sayce^ to 
about 3000 years before the Christian era. It 
is mostly syllabic, and is considered to have 
been derived from hieroglyphic signs of its 
own. 

It is from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, di- 
rectly or through its hieratic form, as is now 
generally conceded, that the Phenician and 
thence the Grecian alphabet came — the al- 
phabet, properly so-called, of letters^ fixed. 
•'M. de Eouge," says Maspero, *' proved that 
at the time when the Shepherds reigned in 
Egypt, the Canaanites had selected, among 
the forms of cursive writing, a certain num- 
ber of characters corresponding to the funda- 
mental sounds of their language. His dem- 
onstration, reproduced in Germany by Lauth, 
Brugsch and Ebers, was considered decisive, 
and the results have been generally accepted. 
The Phenician alphabet is composed of twenty- 
two letters, of which fifteen are so little changed 
that we recognize at a glance their Egyptian 
prototype, and the remainder ascend to the 
hieratic type without violence to the laws 
of probability." ^ This adaptation w^as the work 
of a business people, and a stroke of commer- 

2 '^Chaldean Genesis," p. 24. 

^ Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne," p. 600. 



182 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

cial genius. ** The Pheniciaii alphabet," con- 
tinues Maspero, '^first used in Canaan, became 
modified according to locaHties, and formed 
successively the Aramean, Palmyrene, and 
Hebrew alphabets. Carried by the Sidonians 
and Tyrians into the countries where com- 
merce led them, it became the common stock 
from which were detached all [nearly all] the 
alphabets of the known world from India and 
Mongolia to Gaul and Spain" — not including 
the extreme east and extreme west. 

How early the Phenician or Canaanite — 
which is of course the Hebrew — alphabet 
vas in use, we cannot tell. It was in use 
'n Canaan, say the Egyptologists, during the 
Hyksos dynasty. Nor can we say with ab- 
solute confidence how early any of the mat- 
ters contained in the earlier part of the Pen- 
tateuch were committed to writing. There is 
not only ingenuity but weight in the sug- 
gestion of Herder* that such lists of names 
as form the early genealogical tables carry 
with them the necessity of writing to pre- 
serve them. He even suggests, and not with- 
out show of reason, that the very effort to 
preserve such tables may have been the ne- 
cessity which led to the invention of early 
writing. *'If," says he, *' alphabetic writing 

4 Herder's ** Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," i. 254r-7. 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS, 183 

was ever to be invented, it must be brought 
about by reason of something simple, some- 
thing very definite and very indispensable, 
which could not be expressed by images. 
Now names exhibit these very conditions; 
and it is a fact that names and genealogi- 
cal registers constitute the earliest tradi- 
tions of the primeval world." He suggests 
that the fifth chapter of Genesis may have 
been, with its names and numbers, the first 
tablet of thought in articulate sounds and 
''transmitted through Noah to Shem, as the 
meaning of the latter name might denote." 
If we do not fully adopt this opinion, we may 
recognize the seemingly insuperable necessity 
that such a series of otherwise disconnected 
words should be handed down by written 
record. "These registers," Herder strikingly 
remarks, ''are the historical archives of the 
Orientals, and the historical traditions are 
the commentary." And in speaking of the 
history before the Deluge he says, "it passes 
obviously into a mere record of significant 
names, genealogical records and family tra- 
ditions mingled together; and here too its 
poverty is a pledge of its truth." ^ 

If the Phenician alphabet was introduced 
into Palestine only in the time of the Shepherd 
5 75. i. p. 254 



184 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Kings of Egypt, it would appear that though 
Abraham would have found it already there, 
yet he did not learn it there; for he himself 
came up from a land that had known the art 
of writing some hundred years — five hundred, 
if we were to adopt Sayce's date — earlier than 
the earliest of those Kings [about 2200 b. c, 
the beginning of the Shepherd reigns, accord- 
ing to Brugsch]. How far back in the line 
of Abraham's ancestry written memorials of 
the kind indicated may have existed, we can 
hardly even conjecture. There is nothing in- 
ci-edible in the supposition that writing may 
have been an antediluvian invention, but some 
things to favor it. Surely the general skill in 
the arts would be in keeping with it; the very 
process of constructing a vessel five hundred 
and seventeen feet long would imply some 
species of notation ; and the genealogical tables, 
with the definite numbers, in the fifth of Gen- 
esis, would seem almost to have necessitated 
it. And a noticeable indication of evident 
but fossihzed mistake in copying, (which how- 
ever would naturally have been limited to a 
script like the Hebrew or Phenician,) is found 
in Gen. iv. 18, where ^^?^^^^p is changed at 
once to 5^^?J;*n?p. 

And let me here remark in passing that the 
admission of such ancient genealogies into 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 185 

the Pentateuch is no more peculiar than the 
admission of the much longer genealogies, 
evidently from the tribal records, into the 
Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Indeed the 
similarity of the phenomena might indicate 
similarity of origin and give color to the 
suggestion of Herder that in the genealo- 
gies of Genesis v. we have the transcript 
of an early recorded table. 

It is not difficult to fix at once upon other 
portions of the early histor/ which have the 
appearance of coming down from a far great- 
er antiquity than the time of Moses, substan- 
tially in their present form. Without seeking 
for other possible instances in the preceding 
narratives with their aita^ Xeyof^ieya, the mind 
fixes at once on the account of the Deluge, 
and that of Abraham's warlike expedition. 
In the history of the Deluge, when one reads 
not merely the steady announcement of defi- 
nite numbers, and that not alone in the di- 
mensions of the ark, the time of the rain and 
of the prevalence of the water, and the height 
of the water, the several intervals of waiting 
and the age of Noah, but the reiterated, mi- 
nute and emphatic exactness, such as the six 
hundredth year, second month, seventeenth 
day of the month '' in the bone of that day," 
the seventh month and seventeenth day of 



186 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

the month, tenth month and first day, six 
hundred and first year, first month, first day, 
second month, seven and twentieth day — 
and still more all the marks of a personal 
beholding and participation, as when the 
waters increased and first '* bare np the ark " 
and *' it was lifted up above the earth," then 
the waters prevailed and increased '' greatly, 
greatly " till '' the ark walked upon the face 
of the waters," and still they prevailed '' till all 
the high hills nrider the whole heaven were 
covered," and the mountains were covered — 
then how the waters decreased, and in the 
first day of the month "the tops of the moun- 
tains were seen;'' then all the vivid minute- 
ness of detail, opening the window to send the 
raven, and afterwards the dove, putting forth 
his hand and pulling her in unto him, sending 
her once more and on her return " ?o, in her 
mouth an olive-leaf fresh-plucked " — once more 
ijemoving the covering, looking, ''and behold 
the face of the ground was dry" — I say, in all 
the exactness and minuteness of this pre- 
Raphaelite painting, how can one fail to feel 
the presence of a contemporary record, or, as 
some have called it, a log-book. And further- 
more, when one considers the exactness of 
statement in regard to such a multiplicity 
of details, and contrasts the sobriety and con- 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS, 187 

sistency of this simple narrative, with the 
dimness, the inconsistencies and the extrava- 
gances of that multitude of traditional ac- 
counts of the Deluge that are found scattered 
through every part of the world, it is not 
easy to see how it could have been thus kept 
in its integrity except as placed on record 
at no distant date from the transactions so 
carefully recorded. 

So of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis 
— when one looks at its wholly detached 
completeness, at its several peculiarities of 
diction and utterance, including its men- 
tion of Abraham as '* the Hebrew," and espe- 
cially at the double set of names whereby 
terms which were obsolete in Moses' time are 
explained by their later equivalents, coming 
down, how^ever, no further than his day, unless 
in the case of Dan, — not difficult of explana- 
tion, — he cannot well dissent from Ewald's 
statement that "all the indications tend to 
show that this whole piece was written prior 
to the time of Moses." ^ These are specimens 
of what may be freely admitted in many other 
instances less noticeable, to whatever extent 
clear indications may demand. Although 
there is now a strong tendency to accept the 
theory of certain leading minds, and recog- 

6 **Geschichte von Israel," vol. i. p. 80, Note. 



188 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

nize an Elohist, two Jehovists, a Deuterono- 
mist, and one, or more, ^'redactors/' yet cer- 
tainly nothing can be more dreary and 
bewildering than the attempt to harmonize 
or even to tabulate the diversities in the as- 
signment of the respective contributions, from 
the time of Astruc to that of Dillmann. 

And here let it be observed that the accept- 
ance and incorporation of such earlier true 
narratives into the history, no more militates 
against the proper Mosaic authorship of that 
history, than the introduction of large extracts 
from Bradford or Morton, or other and later 
sources of contemporary information, inter- 
feres with the proper authorship of a history 
of the United States by Bancroft ; and when 
this latter historian, recording with quotations 
a condensed statement of the establishment 
of Fort du Quesne (iv. 117) adds ^' where now 
is Pittsburgh," he almost exactly imitates the 
Hebrew historian, in Gen xiv. with a mere 
substitution of the English idiom. "^ 

7 Thus Professor C. A. Briggs, who somewhat distinctly 
assents to the general analysis of the Pentateuch and Josh- 
ua into four principal documents combined by a ** redac- 
tor" or editor and compiler, makes this very decided 
statement: ** There is nothing in this variation of docu- 
ments as such to require that they should be successive 
and separated by wide intervals, or that would prevent 
their being nearly contemporaneous. There is nothing 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 189 

It may also be added that very probably 
the incorporation of earlier narratives explains 
many characteristic forms of phraseology, and 
will, as has been so often argued, in part ac- 
count for the diverse names of God which 
appear conspicuously in the earlier part of 
the Pentateuch. I say, in part. For so far 
as appears, no theory that has been advanced 
fully explains the facts. For after more than 
three quarters of a century of the ablest and 
most searching discussion, the following facts 
are to be observed: (1) The lack of any 
absolute or general agreement among the 
anatomists of the Pentateuch as to the num- 
ber of parts of which it is formed; (2) still 
less agreement in the assignment of the sev- 
eral portions to their supposed originals; (3) 
and no thoroughly self-consistent theory of 
a supposed methodical combination of doc- 
uments in whatever mode, has yet been 

in this distinction of documents as such that forces us to 
abandon the Mosaic age as the time of their origin. The 
fault of the supplementary and the crystallization hypoth- 
eses, is in their attempts to determine the order and fix 
the time of the genesis of those various documents that 
constitute our Pentateuch and spread them over the various 
periods of the history of Israel. The evidences on which 
these theories are built, are exceedingly precarious." 
*'Pres. Eev." vol. iv. p. 100. To these faults he might 
also add, with equal force, the attempt to determine pre- 
cisely the limits of the documents employed. 



190 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

broached — unless it is some such '' supple- 
mentary hypothesis" as virtually recognizes 
one proper author. Without attempting here 
the details of a volume or volumes, it is suf- 
ficient to say that all these theories, however 
dexterously adjusted, break down in the ap- 
plication in some or all of the following 
modes: (a) the actual presence and sometimes 
preponderance in one alleged document of 
terms pronounced characteristic of a different 
one, as where the name of Jehovah prevails 
over that of Elohim in an Elohistic passage, 
especially in the later books of the Pentateuch ; 
(i) the abrupt introduction of alleged charac- 
teristic words in narratives alleged to be of a 
different origin (as Jehovah, Gen. vii. 16, 
xvii. 1, and many other words and phrases) ; 
(c) the continual abundant cross references of 
each respective portion to statements con- 
tained in the other alleged class of documents 
— as of the Elohistic to the Jehovistic, and 
vice versa; {d) and finally, excessive and un- 
reasonable dissections and dismemberments 
of closely connected passages, required in 
order to make even this show of a case.^ 

8 Thus, Gen. xxxvii. has thirty verses which Davidson 
(after Boehmer) divides into thirty-two fragments, and 
Knobel into nine. Gen. xli. is analyzed by Davidson into 
forty-two fragments, by Knobel into twenty-two, and 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 191 

And a man of sober judgment, wliile freely 
admitting the use of other materials, yet when 
he ponders the diverse and ever-changing hy- 
potheses, the conflicting results, and especially 
the arbitrary devices by which they are largely 
maintained, as well as the uses to which they 
are applied, may be pardoned for questioning 
whether the great body of these bold specula- 
tors are not more earnestly bent on estabhsli- 
ing an ingenious theory than ascertaining the 
very truth. For be it observed, we do not 
dispute the use of previous material, by what- 
ever of several names designated, though we 
may demur to the unwarranted inferences 
from it, and the capricious minuteness of the 
schemes that are erected upon it. 

Nor, on the other hand, can we insist on 
the opinion that the characteristic names of 
God, for example, w^ere in each and every 
case selected in accordance with some con- 
scious plan. Doubtless in many instances a 

by Dillmann (Knobel's editor in 1875) it is regarded as 
chiefly by one writer with nine insertions, sometimes of a 
verse and twice of two or three words only. Schrader 
(in 1876) finds in ch. xlvii. some nine different portions, 
although in two instances (vs. 11 and 27) they consist each 
oitwo words from the Elohist, etc. Meanwhile and last of 
all Kuenen and Wellhausen come forward to reverse all 
preceding dates and make the Elohistic portions later 
than the Jehovistic. 



192 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

definite reason existed for using (for example) 
the name of Jehovah as the God of revelation 
and of covenant. Thus we may, if we choose, 
suppose, with Kahsch (on Genesis) and even 
Knobel, that the change in Gen. ii. 4 from 
Elohim to Jehovah-Elohim was made with 
the design to indicate that the God of crea- 
tion was the revealed God of the Jews, Je- 
hovah. But the failure of any theory fairly 
to explain all the cases brings us to the 
no-theory that while the distinct accounts 
already in existence may have suggested 
diverse phraseology, yet, in the main, the 
choice of the divine names was a matter of 
unconscious influence, much like the selection 
of the names of the Saviour, whether Christ 
Jesus or Jesus Christ. 

Now the recognition of such things incor- 
porated in the Pentateuch in no way affects the 
view that the law-giver, Moses, was directly or 
indirectly the responsible author of the book 
— unless it were shown that these embodied 
documents were certainly later than his time. 

And this leads to the remark that the at- 
tempts to invalidate the traditional view in 
regard to the authorship of the Pentateuch 
may all be characterized as efforts to set aside 
the usual laws of evidence by evasions and 
side-issues, — chiefly unwarranted inferences 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 193 

or unfounded assertions. In other words, they 
steadily divert the attention from the central 
features of the case to a maze of minor discus- 
sions, either without bearing on the question 
or unsupported by satisfactory proof We are 
not to be diverted by a labyrinth of petty as- 
sumptions and ingenious, but arbitrary, sup- 
positions, from the great decisive features of 
evidence, which, if they are as old as the hills, 
are also as firm. The great principles of evi- 
dence cannot be set aside. 

Now glancing rapidly over this whole field 
— which is all I can do — when we look at the 
history of the Pentateuch, we find it coming 
to us from remote antiquity accredited as sub- 
stantially the work of Moses, in the same way 
as ancient classic writers or Josephus — with 
this remarkable difference, that the books of 
Moses are embedded in the history and testi- 
mony and institutions of a whole nation. Nor 
had any other authorship ever been thought of. 

We find again that, so far as any claim is 
put forth by the books themselves, it is for 
this authorship in general Deuteronomy ex- 
pressly claims throughout to be Moses words, 
and in xxxi. 9, 24-26 the principal part of it 
(certainly xii.-xxvi.) is declared to have been 
written by him. In four previous passages in 
the Pentateuch (Ex. xviii. 14; xxiv. 4; xxxi v. 



194 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

21 \ Num. xxxiii. 2) he is declared to have 
committed certain things to writing. And 
not only is the law of Leviticus again and 
again introduced with the statement, ''the 
Lord spake unto Moses," where, too, as Pro- 
fessor Green well says, "the circumstances of 
these enactments are inseparably united with 
the historical narrative of the time," but in a 
dozen places in Deuteronomy the speaker 
Moses refers to previous enactments of Ex- 
odus, Leviticus, Numbers as given by him,^ 
To which may be added the important fact 
that the essential and systematic unity of 
the present Pentateuch as a composition is 
affirmed by such analysts as Ewald, Tuch, 
Knobel, Hupfeld, in the strongest terms, and 
is too obvious to be disputed. 

Again, the existence of a book in the hands 
of the nation, a book called "' the law," '' the 
law of Moses," ''the book of the law," "the 
book of the law by the hand of Moses" — all 
the same — can be traced back — with quota- 
tions identifying it — from the New Testa- 
ment through Esdras, Maccabees, Ecclesias- 
ticus, and, with more or less distinctness, 
nearly all the several books of the Old Testa- 
ment up to Joshua.^^ The references of this 

9 Stebbins, "Study of the Pentateuch," pp. 184-6. 

10 Stebbins, ib. p. 83. 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 195 

kind to such a book can be enumerated by 
the score, and the undoubted quotations from 
and allusions to its contents, specifically, by 
the hundred. 

Such are the claims and testimonies. And 
while they certainly do not assert in set terms 
that every portion of these books was written 
down by Moses or by his amanuensis, neither 
is it necessary for us so to affirm. For while 
we might well stand firm on the position of 
Schultz, that Moses was both the Jehovist 
and Deuteronomist, using the older Elohistic 
records and composing the whole Pentateuch 
except the concluding part of Deuteronomy 
(and the glosses that have since crept in), we 
might, if we chose, hold with Kurtz that the 
most of Deuteronomy and large portions of 
the Pentateuch being written by Moses in 
person, the remainder was arranged and com- 
piled under his direction before entering the 
promised land ; or perhaps we should occupy 
no unwarrantable position if we held, with 
Delitzsch formerly, that the completion of the 
whole work, of which Deuteronomy and much 
else were by the hand of Moses, was reserved 
for one or more of his trusted associates, as 
Eleazer the priest, and Joshua, who was a 
prophet, or, some one of the elders on whom 
the spirit of God rested. 



196 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

With this explanation I proceed to remark 
succinctly, how the original and unbroken 
testimony that Moses is responsible for the 
Pentateuch is confirmed by all the internal in- 
dications of which the case naturally admits. 

The peculiarities of its archaic diction, ex- 
hibiting, at least in parts of it, a marked dif- 
ference from the later books, except as those 
quote or refer to this older book, have been 
too often pointed out in detail, and too forci- 
bly asserted by scholars whose testimony is 
]iot to be disputed (such as De Wette, Gesen- 
ius, Ewald, Delitzsch,^^) to require me to go 
into details here. 

In connection with these admitted marks 
of antiquity — often, if you please, a higher 
antiquity than the time of the Exodus and 
Moses — we find the narrative tinged with lan- 
guage that belongs only to the influences and 
circumstances of a residence in Egypt. The 
ancient narrative of the deluge incorporates, 
as given to us, the Egyptian N^jri for the ark. 
The narrative of Moses' infancy and rescue, 
has the same word, and three others of Egyp- 

11 Thus Delitzsch writes in 1877 (" Preface to the Leviti- 
cal Priests," p. 10), "The so-called Elohistic language is 
ancient throughout; there is no trace of the peculiar post- 
exilic forms and syntax." But this Elohistic portion is 
that which it is now attempted to place after the exile. 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 197 

tian origin, together with the Egyptian phrase 
"the lip of the river." A large number of 
<;ther words found in the papyri and on the 
monuments cling to the book, in token of the 
recent contact of its author with Egypt. 

Again, the freshness and minuteness and 
exactness of correspondence between this 
narrative and the Egyptian antiquities of the 
time, is incompatible with any considerable 
interval between the Exodus and the compo- 
sition of the Egyptian period of this Hebrew 
history. And here let me fall back on so great 
an authority as that of R. S. Poole, deliberately 
pronounced within three years. After speak- 
ing of the "extraordinary acuteness and skill" 
with which German and Dutch critics have la- 
bored upon the Mosaic documents alone, "and 
their result " " to reduce the date of the docu- 
ments, except a few fragments, many centu- 
ries," he proceeds to say that "the work has 
been that of great literary critics, not archee- 
ologists. The Egyptian documents emphati- 
cally call for a reconsideration of the whole 
question of the date of the Pentateuch. It is 
now certain that the narrative of the history 
of Joseph, and the sojourn and exodus of the 
Israelites, that is to say, the portion from 
Genesis xxxix. to Exodus xv., so far as it re- 
lates to Egypt, is substantially not much later 



198 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

than 1300 b. c. [about the time he assigns for 
tlie Exodus], in other words was written while 
the memory of the events was fresh. The mi- 
nute accuracy of the text is inconsistent with 
any later date. It is not merely that it shows 
knowledge of Egypt, but knowledge of Egypt 
under the Eamessides and yet earlier. The 
condition of the country, the chief cities of the 
frontier, the composition of the army, are true 
of the age of the Eamessides, and not true of 
the Pharaohs contemporary with Solomon and 
his successors." And after a long list of such 
marked and striking congruities, Mr. Poole 
proceeds, *' These arguments have not failed 
to strike foreign Egyptologists who have no 
theological bias. These independent schol- 
ars, without actually formulating any view of 
the date of the greater part of the Pentateuch, 
appear uniformly to treat its text as an author- 
ity to be cited side by side with Egyptian 
monuments. So Lepsius in his researches on 
the date of the Exodus, and Brugsch in his dis- 
cussion of the route, Chabas in his paper on 
Eameses and Pithom. Of course it would be 
unfair to implicate any one of these scholars 
iu the inferences expressed above, but at the 
same time it is impossible that they can, for in- 
stance, hold Kuenen's theories of the date of 
the Pentateuch, so far as the part relating to 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 199 

Egypt is concerned. They have taken the two 
sets of documents, Hebrew and Egyptian, side 
by side, and, in the working of the elaborate 
problems, found everything consistent with ac- 
curacy on both sides; and of course accuracy 
would not be maintained in a tradition handed 
down through several centuries." ^^ 

'*If," proceeds the same writer, ''the large 
portion of the Pentateuch relating to the Egyp- 
tian period of Hebrew history, including as it 
does Elohistic as well as Jehovistic sections, 
is of the remote antiquity here claimed for it, 
no one can doubt that the first four books 
are substantially of the same age." 

Again, the Pentateuch from the time of the 
Exodus contains abundant contemporaneous 
marks of the long wandering. It is sprinkled 
with arrangements for a migratory nation on 
its migrations. How prominent the legislation 
for the march in all the details of the march, 
and for the construction and transportation 
of the movable tabernacle and for sanitary 
matters on the way ! The minuteness of de- 
tails of these things, and of the census, and 
the princes' offerings, is completely in keeping 
and of necessity as exact directions given to 
be exactly executed then and there, precisely 
like some contract with all the specifications to 

12 " Contemporary Eeview, " March, 1879. 



200 HISTORY IlSr THE PENTATEUCH. 

build a house — or as facts of contemporaneous 
interest orHy; but, except as given for direct use 
and contemporary record, so intolerably tedi- 
ous, that as a matter of later and distant his- 
tory it is, as Delitzsch truly remarks, " incon- 
ceivable " they should ever have been preserved 
or invented, much less recorded and trans- 
mitted. The wood of which the tabernacle is to 
be made is the shittim wood, the one prevalent 
tree of the Sinaitic Wadies, and the only solid 
tree of sufficient size to furnish the planks as 
prescribed. The cypress of Palestine is not 
there, nor the cedar, except in slight quan- 
tities for purification, — for a purpose like that 
for which it was used in Egypt. The game 
of the wilderness — like the chamois — is in- 
cluded among the clean animals of the Law. 
Blunt in his ''Undesigned Coincidences" has 
mentioned several minute but almost con- 
cealed correspondences in regard to the fall 
of Korah's company, the arrangement of the 
tribes with reference to the tabernacle, and 
the like, which could have come only from a 
participant in the journey. 

Professor W. Robertson Smith does indeed 
say that ''the Pentateuch displays an exact 
topographical knowledge of Palestine, but by 
no means so exact a knowledge of the wilder- 
ness of wandering Accordingly, the 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS, 201 

patriarchal sites can still be set down on the 
map with definiteness, but geographers are 
still unable to assign with certainty the site 
of Mt. Sinai, because the narrative has none 
of that local color which the story of an eye- 
witness is sure to possess." But the simple 
reason for the difference — so far as it exists — 
is that fixed landmarks, circumstantial differ- 
ences, and permanent populations have in the 
one case furnished means of identification, in 
the other not. The threescore and ten palm 
trees and twelve wells of water at Elim are 
local coloring enough. Sinai, we maintain, 
can be identified by the features indicated in 
the narrative, probably the wilderness of Sin, 
and the place of crossing the Ked Sea, the en- 
campment by the sea, perhaps Marah, possibly 
the region of the quails. But as a general 
thing there exists, whether in the Sinaitic 
peninsula, or still more in the wilderness of 
wandering, no local coloring. It is in the wil- 
derness — as the traveller can testify — a mon- 
otonous waste, with no discernible landmarks 
by which to describe, and, in the peninsula, a 
maze of similar wadies running among rocks, 
hills and mountains. There is, for the most 
part, absolutely nothing by which specifically 
to indicate them, except in the order and time 
of the journey, and no local population to have 



202 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

handed down the names or knowledge of them 
in the absence of specified landmarks. The 
objection misconceives the whole aspect of the 
case. 

Again, a mark of the time of the composi- 
tion, or the time of Moses, is found in the pro- 
gressive adaptive legislation incorporated with 
the more permanent matters. Thus it has often 
been pointed out how, as emergencies arose on 
the way, the earlier laws were modified to meet 
the emergency, by supplementary legislation. 
Mr. Stebbins affirms that in Deuteronomy there 
are as many as sixty such amendments or mod- 
ifications of the laws as given in Exodus and 
Numbers; besides at least a dozen express ref- 
erences to the previous legislation of Moses. 
At the time of the last residence at Kadesh, 
just before the final departure for Canaan, we 
have some express regulations with reference 
to their entering that country to settle, and the 
new circumstances ensuing. Still other regu- 
lations or modifications are made when the 
Israelites had left the wilderness, and were 
encamped by the Jordan. All bears the mark 
of the long journey and the shifting exigen- 
cies. And, as has been well said, the difference 
between the hopeful strain in which Moses ad- 
dresses Israel at the close of the original law- 
giving (Lev. xxvi.) and the sad, solemn and 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS, 203 

monitory tone of the reminiscences and ex- 
hortations of Deuteronomy, is precisely that 
which belonged to the different occasions and 
the man. 

Such, briefly indicated in merest outline, 
are some of the constraining reasons why we 
believe with the ancient Jewish church, ap- 
parently with the Saviour and the apostles, 
and the whole Christian Church till the pres- 
ent c.entury, that Moses was the responsible 
author of their ancient records. The reasons 
seem to us massive and conclusive. They 
settle the question unless there are insuper- 
able reasons to the contrary. But we cheer- 
fully listen to whatever can be alleged against 
this mass of evidence. It is precisely the 
same kind of evidence, be it observed, on 
which rests the authorship, not of one or 
some, but all the writings of the past, just as 
soon as the author and his contemporary gen- 
eration have passed away, with this mighty 
diff'erence, that our volume is incorporated, as 
I have remarked, with the history, literature, 
institutions and traditions of a great continu- 
ous nation from the very beginning, as no 
other authorship ever has been or can be. 
Be it remembered that the denial' which — 
•unless for the most imperative necessity — re- 
jects the accredited authorship of the Penta- 



204 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

teuch, in the same denial is dislodging the 
foundations of literary history — and is a pro- 
cess to which no limits can be set. 

And here — in the objections hitherto urged 
— we do not seem to find anything which car- 
ries constraining force. We admit some diffi- 
culties which await solution. But they are 
no more than are reasonably to be expected, 
if so many. Some of the objections are as- 
sertions that cannot be maintained, others are 
inferences that do not bind. 

Indeed so rapid has been the succession and 
to some degree so evanescent the force of the 
objections raised that one hardly knows what 
of them are still relied upon, so do the fash- 
ions change. 

The old difficulties raised concerning the 
art of writing, and from the alleged mistakes 
of narrative concerning Egyptian customs have 
long been buried deep out of sight. 

The allegation that the relation of a miracle 
proves the narrative to be a late tradition, rests 
on the groundless assumption that there can 
be no miracle. 

The difficulty of receiving as the narrative 
of a participant or contemporary the account 
of the wandering, because of the impractica- 
bility of providing for such a multitude, would 
indeed be insuperable but for the very circum- 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 205 

stances stated in the narrative, — including the 
miraculous provision. 

The objection from the presence of alleged 
documents in the narrative long managed to 
hide, under a vast multitude of details and a 
cloud of mist, the very simple fact that the 
presence of such documents in no way mili- 
tated against the final Mosaic authorship — 
unless these documents contained anachron- 
isms, clear marks of later date. 

The attempt to find such anachronisms has 
proved so feeble as to be fairly pronounced a 
failure. We have but to concede a few, a very 
few instances of the slightest revision or of 
explanatory glosses, such as were easily and 
naturally incorporated with the text, and all 
is clear. Indeed the few patches of this kind 
betray themselves almost at once. Of plausi- 
ble anachronisms the list is of the scantiest. 
The case of ''Dan" mentioned in Genesis xiv. 
is the strongest, but is easily explained in sev- 
eral w^ays, one of which is (with Ewald) that, 
in keeping with the other explanatory names, 
this also was inserted and the older name dis- 
placed. When Prof. Kobertson Smith still 
insists on the case of '' westward and south- 
ward" — literally sea- ward and negev-ward — 
as expressions for this purpose that could only 
be formed in Palestine, his application of the 



206 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

fact is a non-sequitur. They were forined in 
Palestine, and there they were incorporated 
with the Hebrew or Palestinian language in 
which Abraham and afterward Moses found 
them and used them. A few statements, sucli 
as concerning the meekness of Moses, the eat- 
ing of manna till they came to the borders of 
Canaan, and the size of an omer, and other sim 
ilar parenthetical remarks, such as may be con- 
ceded to be by a later hand, and of course the 
account of Moses' death — -just as tlie date of 
Bradford's deatk is subjoined to his own man- 
uscript account of the Plymouth Pilgrims and 
their decease one after another — comprise the 
main body of these difficulties. The alhisiou 
to the kings reigning in Edom before any 
reigned in Israel, some two similar passages 
(Lev. xviii. 28, Deut. ii. 12), and a few expres- 
sions in Deuteronomy may perhaps be added. 
Now making the rather obvious supposition 
of a few such easy and natural revisions and 
glosses, and what weight does their presence 
carry to detract from the great and funda- 
mental aspects of the authorsliip ? Of the nu- 
merical or arithmetical objections so carefully 
collected and so confidently paraded some 
twenty years ago, may we not as confidently 
say that they were overwhelmed by an ava- 
lanche of effectual refutations, proving in dcr 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS, 207 

tail an unwarrantable treatment of the nar* 
rative by arbitrary and often clearly false 
limitations or expansions, and in case of real 
difficulties by the equally arbitrary exclusion 
of explanations perfectly fair and feasible? 
Thus much in brief for the case as it has ex- 
isted until the most recent times. 

But what shall be said of the latest form of 
objection which has arisen after some nineteen 
years or so — like another lunar cycle ? I mean 
the theory of Kuenen as in part interpreted 
by Prof Smith. For a general refutation of 
that theory as advanced by this bright Scotch 
Professor, in his main position that the dis- 
tinctive Priesthood of Aaron's sons and the rit- 
ual establishment of Levitical law did not exist 
before the time of Ezra — I refer you to a discus- 
sion in the January number of the '' Presbyte- 
rian Eeview" and elsewhere by an honored pro- 
fessor of this Theological Seminary, Dr. Green. 
And in the demolition of that main position 
of Robertson Smith, the theory of the master 
Kuenen is also demolished. And how pre- 
tentious is the airy structure in its large prep- 
arations and in the perverse ingenuity of its 
details. It was a bold man who as a prelim- 
inary breaking of the ground, undertook to 
reverse the decision of the great host of his 
critical predecessors and place the so-called 



208 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

Jehovist earlier in time than the Elohist; who 
ventured openly to set up his ''supposition 
with respect to the Mosaic period" and his 
"conception of historical development/' as a 
test, and on the strength of that supposition 
remanded the Pentateuch to a later age; who 
dares to assert that the writers of the books 
''fearlessly allowed themselves to be guided 
in their statements by the wants of the pres- 
ent and the requirements of the future," "and 
considered themselves exempt from all respon- 
sibility;" who after ruling out the historical 
books as unhistorical and as only expressing 
" ilie idea which was entertained of that his- 
tory in the eighth century," yet proceeds to 
build up half a volume of Israel's history out 
of these very repudiated sources; who, to rid 
himself of the troublesome witness of Chron- 
icles, could summarily dismiss the Chronicler 
as one who with all the traditional facts clearly 
before him yet gave an entirely different ver- 
sion for his priestly ends; who can rest the 
main weight of his central position on the 
implied assumption that the violation of a 
law, even the failure to mention a custom, 
is evidence that no such law or custom ex- 
isted; and who can deliberately face all the 
seeming impossibilities of the allegation that 
priestly ordinances were made known and 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 209 

imposed upon the Jewish nation now for the 
first time by Ezra, and when modified by Nehe- 
miah or perhaps others, the fraud was quietly 
palmed off upon the returned exiles as "the 
laws of God bv the hand of Moses" — and so 
received without a remonstrance or a suspicion. 
And when reinforced by all the labor and 
ingenuity of Wellhausen the main features 
of the case remain unchanged. iVnd, as I be- 
lieve, it is only a question of a little time for 
rallying to the defence, and we shall see this 
airy fabric like its predecessors vanish into 
thin air again. Already it is clearly shown 
not only that even on Wellhausen's own 
ground of natural development, a defined 
priestly service in connection with the Priest- 
hood would have been at the Exodus prompted 
by the singular completeness of the then exist- 
ing priestly functions and religious ceremonies 
of Egypt itself,^^ but there are historic indica- 
tions, inseparable from the records of the region, 
that a ritual was established by Moses on the 
march and that it certainly existed prior to 
thetimeof theexile.^* Furthermore the dictum 

13 Wilkinson's ''Ancient Egyptians," i. 259, seq., 311, 
seq. 

'4 See Exodus xxiv. 6; Deut. xxiii. 10; Ps. xcix; See also 
Deut. xviii. 1, 2, in connection with. Numbers xviii. 20, 23; 
Deuteronomy being, by decision of this school of critics, 
not later than Josiah's time. 



210 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

that remonstrances for the non-observance of 
a law or code prove its non-existence, breaks 
down wherever it is applied, whether to the 
morals of Israel in Isaiah and EzekieFs time, 
where it would show that the nation had no 
knowledge even of such fundamentallaws as 
against murder, promiscuous adultery, rob- 
bery, fraud, and sin of every kind ; ^^ and also 
through most of the history of the New Tes- 
tament church when it would show that there 
was no knowledge of law or gospel even on 
the part of the Roman priesthood. Again, 
this theory, comprising the position that Moses 
framed no priestly ordinances and also that 
David and Solomon composed no psalms nor 
proverbs, involves the singular improbability 
that what it terms '' the Creative period '' 
(Moses' time) created nothing and that the 
most active and fruitful periods produced 
nothing, but that the time of abject depres- 
sion, general decadence and secondary ability 
is the grat source of the magnificent Hebrew 
literature.^® The theory would still further 

16 Ezekiel xxii. 6-12; xxxiii. 26; Isaiah i. 10, 15, 21, 
23, etc. 

16 For this and other important suggestions in this para- 
graph I am indebted to the elaborate though condensed 
article of Professor Hermann J. Strack on "The Penta- 
teuch," in the last edition of Herzog's "K,eal-Encyklopadie." 
I have thought his article valuable enough to be added 



THE EARL V DOCUMENTS. 211 

stultify many of the provisions contained in 
this 'Spriest code," by making them to originate 
at a time when the occasion for them had 
passed centuries before. This would apply not 
alone to the legislation for the march in gen- 
eral, but to such specific directions as those 
concerning the Urim and Thummim which 
Aaron was to bear (Ex. xxviii. 29, 30), and 
which usage was previously extant in the time 
of Ezra and Nehemiah (Neh. vii. 65 ; Ezra ii. 
63) ; to the right of booty (Num. xxxi. 21-24) ; 
to the original assignment of cities to the 
Levites (Num. xxxv.); and to the ancient 
ordinance of the jubilee year, Lev. xxv., in- 
volving the relations of these Levites (vs. 32, 
33). Indeed the existence of the ritual code 
not only appears from Deuteronomy (conceded 
to be older than the exile) with its distinction 
of clean and unclean (Deut. xii. 15), but some 
of the permitted food of that code were char- 
acteristic animals of the wilderness (xiv. 5). 
Further yet, the effort to trace the language 
of the Pentateuchal priestly code to the time 
of Ezekiel or later, has been vigorously retorted 
by showing, as in the names of the four chief 

(a part of it) as an Appendix to these Lectures. His argu- 
ment is the iQore noteworthy because he accepts the now 
prevalent German theory of four principal documents and 
one or more redactors. 



212 HISTORY m THE PENTATEUCH. 

colors of the priest code, that the language 
of the former is plainly original and ancient, 
in contrast to the Aramean and Arian forms 
of the time of the Chronicles.^"^ And to crown 
all the other inconsistencies of the theory comes 
the pervasive moral monstrosity of a scheme 
which would assign to Ezra and Nehemiali 
a concerted ^^ and successful plan to palm oft' 
upon Israel a complexus of impostures ex- 
tending from Exodus to Kings and Chronicles; 
— the story of Moses' birth being but a myth,^* 
the story of the Law-giving at Sinai, '' the 
product of a poetic necessity," that mountain 
being but the Olympus of the Hebrews, and 
the process of centuries ''being condensed 
into a single thrilling moment for the sake 
of a vivid impression," ^° the Decalogue be- 
longing perhaps to the time of Manasseh, 
Deuteronomy a fabrication of the seventh cen- 
tury, all the historic setting of the Mosaic leg- 
islation a series of supplementary, carefully 
adjusted traditions made by the scribes so as 
to advance '' with all the progressive require- 
ments of life"; Judges a ''systematic general- 
ization, contradicted by facts which we other- 
wise know"^^; Chronicles written to sustain 

17 See this argument in Delitzsch's Preface to "The 
Levitical Priests," p. 11, seq. 

18 Wellhansen, "Encyc. Brit." xiii. 418. 

19 76. p. 399. 20 /5. p. 400. 21 j^. p. 40O. 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 213 

the imposition, and Kings skilfully interpreted 
and modified by these same ingenious and un- 
scrupulous men for the same purpose. 

Add to all this that Ezra and Nehemiah 
themselves, who are put forward as the chief 
fabricators of this alleged new Levitical code, 
present themselves in no such attitude, but 
as restorers of the ancient service. Ezra 
comes forward simply as ''a ready scribe in 
tlie law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel 
had given'' (Ez. vii. 6, 11) who "had pre- 
pared his heart to seek the law of the Lord 
and do it." And when he read the law pub- 
licly to the people, it was '^ the book of the 
law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded 
Israel" (Xeh. viii. 1), "The law which the 
Lord had commanded Moses " (verse 14) 
with, specific references to the priest code 
of Leviticus (viii. 9, comp. Lev. xxiii. 24; 
also Neh. viii. 14, 15, 18, comp. Lev. xxiii. 
40, 42, 36). And both Ezra and Nehe- 
miah make it the burden of their confes- 
sions that " from the days of their fathers 
the people had been in a great trespass and 
cast God's law behind their backs" (Ez. ix. 
6, 7, 10, Neh. ix. 26, 28, 29, 30, 34). Yet these 
are the men who are declared to be the origi- 
nators of the Levitical code, and this is the 
mountainous series of elaborate and system- 



214 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

atic and monstrous impostures that we are 
expected to receive on such shallow and self- 
conflicting arguments as have been indicated. 
Surely when such a structure as this goes 
down, we can hardly say *' great was the fall 
of it " ; for however ingenious, not great was 
the structure. 

And now, gentlemen, I have completed the 
pleasant task I have undertaken, — to set be- 
fore you in some degree the five books of 
Moses as containing the sources of history. 
It has been with me a labor of interest and 
love to which I would have been glad to 
devote more time and labor were it consistent 
with other engagements. I have wished in 
these days of cavil to emphasize the fact that 
not only is our ancient Pentateuch not a book 
to be ashamed of, but it is a book to glory in, 
— with its wonderful elucidations of the whole 
early condition of our globe and of our race, 
with its own announcement of the most mo- 
mentous events and the most vital institu- 
tions, its clear unfolding of the germs of all 
subsequent life, and its graphic delineations 
of scenes and persons otherwise shrouded in 
mist or hidden behind an impenetrable veil. 
It is the grandest of histories, the noblest 
series of biographies, the divine germ of all 



THE EARLY DOCUMENTS, 215 

human institutions, the substructure of all re- 
ligious hopes, and the primal clue to all the 
past and the future of our race. My discus- 
sion has, from its limits, necessarily been 
suggestive, rather than exhaustive. But 
should I have made any suggestion fruitful 
of better results in any of your minds, if I 
have even prompted you to some fresh inqui- 
ries along any portion of this broad and fruit- 
ful field, or stimulated any of you to broader 
investigations or a profounder sacred scholar- 
ship, my best wishes will have been accom- 
plished. And though my discussion has dealt 
largely with the secondary aspect of the vol- 
ume, it has not been in disparagement, but 
in support, of its primary ends. And I cannot 
in closing better express my views on this point 
than in the words of a brilliant expositor: 

'' The Torah is the basis of the Old Testa- 
ment, and the Old Testament the preparation 
for the religion of Eedemption. What the 
four gospels are to the New Testament, that 
are the five books of the law to the Old 
Testament. But not merely do beginning 
and beginning, but beginning and end of the 
Old and New Testament canon, Genesis and 
Apocalypse, run together like the ends of a 
circle. The creation of the heavens and earth 
on the first pages of Genesis corresponds to 



216 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

the creation of the new heavens and the new 
earth on the last page of Revelation. To the 
first creation which had Adam for its end, 
corresponds the new creation which takes the 
second Adam for its beginning. Thus does 
the Holy Scripture form a unity compacted 
into itself, to show that not alone this or that 
book, but the whole is a work of the Holy 
Spirit. The Torah, with its shadow of good 
things to come, is the root, the Apocalypse, 
penetrating into the 'world to come,' is the 
top. Take away the three first chapters of 
Genesis from the Bible, and you take away 
the terminus a quo; take away the last three 
chapters of the Apocalypse, and you take 
away the terminus ad quern.'' And now, with 
many thanks for your kind attention, I take 
my leave. 



APPENDIX. 



STRACK ON THE PENTATEUCH. 

The following extract contains the more im- 
portant part of Prof. Hermann L. Strack's ar- 
ticle on the Pentateuch, in the last edition of 
Herzog's " Eeal - Encyklopadie," Leipzig, 1882. 
His criticisms on the theory of Wellhausen, 
which close the extract, would not be suffi- 
ciently intelligible without his account of the 
recent theories, which precedes it. "We omit 
his summary of the contents of the Pentateuch, 
his ^' justification of the Criticism," and his brief 
narrative of its history from the time of Astruc 
till recent times — the latter topic being by this 
time somewhat famihar. Strack's criticisms are 
the more significant, because of his complete 
sympathy with the ''Higher Criticism." He 
would find the unity of compilation rather in 
the Hexateuch (including Joshua) than the Pen- 
tateuch. He classifies the principal theories as 
three: the Fragment, Supplement, and Docu- 
ment theories. He expresses his sympathy with 
the third, within the range of which, he sa^^s, 
" there exist considerable differences of opinion, 



218 HISTORY IX THE PENTATEUCH. 

relating less to the analysis than to the order 
and age of the sources." ^ 

He recounts the several names that have been 
given to these documents thus: a. The tirst Elo- 
hist, the Ground-writing, Book of Origins, Ana- 
lytic Narrator, A., and (bv Wellhausen) P. C. 
(and 2). h. The second Elohist, the younger 
Elohist, the third Narrator, the Theocratic Nar- 
rator, B. or North-Israelitish Narrator, C, and 
(Wellhausen) E. c. The Jehovist, Supplementer, 
Fourth Narrator, Prophetic Narrator, C, and 
(Wellhausen) J. d. Deuteronomist, D. 

Strack prefers Wellhausen's designation as 
least objectionable, using, however, P. instead of 
P. C. (priest code) and E.^ instead of E. His 

1 He affirms (as against Keil) that " Critics of all tenden- 
cies (Delitzsch, Wellhausen, etc.) are agreed upon the 
necessity of a separation of the fundamental documents, 
and, secondly, that in the analysis of very many sections 
unanimity has been gained, either complete or in the 
main. Thus in the first nine chapters of Genesis, Noldeke, 
Dillmann and Wellhausen unanimously refer to the so- 
called Elohist, i.-ii. 3a; v. (except ver. 29); vi. 9-22; \\\. 11, 
13-16a, 18-21, 2^; viii. 1, 2a; 3b-5, 13a, U-19; ix. 1-17. 
Dift'erences exist in reference to five versos or parts of 
verses. Noldeke and Dillmann add vii. 6; Noldeke adds 
vii. 22, where Dillmann assumes an interference by the 
compiler (redactor), and Wellhausen is for rejection; vii. 23 
is rejected by Noldeke and Wellhausen, while Dillmann 
refers the second half-verse, bat not with full confidence, 
to the same document; of the first of the two half-verses, 
viii. 3a, 13b, which WeUhausen adds, Dillmann only says 
it is 'probably' by the Jehovist." It will be observed 
that the claim is cautious — for "very many sections," and 
that the specification made is carefully chosen. 



APPENDIX. 219 

subsequent statements, wliicli we give, will show 
the latest phases of the discussion, the fluctua- 
tions and caprices of the theories, and the insur- 
mountable objections to the latest, most elabor- 
ate, and most ingenious of them. His blows 
are the more telling because of his sympathv 
with the '' critical " process. He proceeds as 
follows : 

THE MOST IMPORTANT OPINIONS AT PRESENT ADVOCATED. 

a. Eb. Schrader, in the eighth edition of De 
Wette's "Introduction to the Old Testament" 
(Berlin, 1869), declares for a union of the Docu- 
ment and Supplement theories; holding that P., 
recognizable until the end of the book of Joshua, 
wi'ote in the beginning of David's reign, was 
most certainly a priest, probably a Judean; that 
E.'^ traceable to I Kings ix. 28, probably a North- 
Israelite, wrote soon after the separation of the 
kingdoms, between 975 and 950; that probably 
both made use of written materials; that J., also 
belonging to the northern kingdom, between 
825 and 800, combined in a free w^aj the w^orks 
of P. and E.2 into a harmonious whole, making- 
many additions, partly from other written rec- 
ords (e. (/., Ex. xxi.-xxiii.), partly from oral tra- 
ditions. The groundwork of Deuteronomy (iv. 
44 to chap xxviii.) was composed not long before 
the eighteenth year of Josiah by some one inti- 
mately related to Jeremiah, an inspired man, 
who, after the destruction of the kingdom of 
Judah, inserted ins work into P., E.^, J. The 



220 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

separation of the Thora, i, e., of the Pentateuch 
in its present form, from the subsequent history, 
did not take place before the end of the Baby- 
lonian captivity. It was publicly sanctioned at 
the time of Ezra. Schrader even now holds fast 
to his theory. 

h, Th. Noldeke, in his investigations upon the 
criticism of the Old Testament, proposed the fol- 
lowing view: P., E.s, J. spring from the tenth 
century, or before the ninth. E.^ is extant only 
in J.'s recasting. P. may not be the oldest 
writing, but cannot be much younger than the 
two others. The author of the part D., written 
shortly before the reformation of Josiah, wrought 
his work into the previously complete Haxateuch, 
perhaps also separated the book of Joshua. From 
information given me on the 20th of May, 1 882, 
in regard to Noldeke's present position on the 
Pentateuch criticism, I infer the following: Nol- 
deke has given up his attempt at identifying 
the editor (redactor) with the writer of Deuter- 
onomy. He declares it impossible to separate 
critically the mass of the Pentateuch which re- 
mains after P. and D. are withdrawn from it. 
He cannot accede to the opinion of Graf and 
Wellhausen. In the law literature no rectilinear 
development can be recognized. He adheres to 
the dependence of Ezekiel upon P. The writer 
of Deuteronomy must at all events have had be- 
fore him a law literature written in essentially 
the same style and often in the same phraseology 
as that of the priest code. 



APPENDIX. 221 

c. Aug. Dillmann will express his opinion con- 
secutively at the end of his revision of Knobel's 
" Commentarv on the Hexateuch." From his 
present utterances we may infer the following: 
Whether P. or E.^ may claim priority of date is 
a question. E.^, belonging to the bloom of the 
prophetic life in the central tribes, is certainly 
older than J., whose writing rests upon that of 
E.^ throughout, and is much more nearly related 
to D. in time and spirit, the latter having been 
composed shortly before Josiah's reform. P., 
E.^, and J. were wrought together by one edi- 
tor (before or after D.?). The narrative of Ne- 
hemiah, viii.-x., has reference to the whole Pen- 
tateuch. — For traces of post-exile revision and 
editing, see " Comm. on Ex. and Lev.," pp. viii., 
356 ff., 620. — P., E.^, and J. have very ancient 
sources, especially the legal contents; e. g., E. 
has received the Book of the Covenant, Ex. xx., 
xxii. to xxiii. 19; P. and J., in Lev. v. 1-6, 21, 26 
(compare vi., vii. 17-26), make use of an older co- 
dex ("Law of Sinai"). 

d. 1. Franz Delitzsch wrote as late as 1872, 
(Com. on Gen.), ''The book of Deuteronomy 
shows itself Mosaic, and must in the main be 
recognized as Mosaic;" and "A man like Eleazar 
the priest wrote the great work beginning with 
N"I2 n"'t^J<"in into which he put the covenant. A 
second, like Joshua, who is a prophet and spoke 
like a prophet or one of those D;jpT upon whom 
the spirit of Moses rested, found himself empow- 
ered to complete this work, and he embodied 



222 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

with it the entire Deuteronomy, by which he had 
formed himself. Thus originated the Thora, not 
without the use of other written documents by 
both narrators." Since 1876 Dehtzsch, at first es- 
pecially influenced by Aug. Kayser, has modified 
his views considerably, and in such a manner 
that he has approached Graf and his disciples as 
to the succession and analysis of the original 
writings ; but has quite differently determined the 
time of their production, and has earnestly de- 
clared himself against the conclusions which that 
school draws in regard to the history, especially 
the religious history of Israel, as the result of 
their critical investigations. Concerning E.2, I 
find in Dehtzsch's writings only the following ex- 
pression (Pent-Crit. Stud., 1880, P. 338, f.)— " It is 
probable that the book of the covenant, the laws 
of the two tables and various narrations, belong- 
ing to the so-called second Elohist, were already 
interwoven with the Jehovistic work when Deut- 
eronomy originated and became attached to it." 
Next in order Delitzsch places J. D is ranked 
after Solomon, but before Isaiah. Next is the 
law of sanctification, i. e., especially the code con- 
tained in Lev. xvii.-xxvi. Then comes P., the 
youngest figure in the Legislation that refers 
back to Moses, written before the exile, and be 
fore Ezekiel. Delitzsch cites by way of comparison 
the many records previous to the Canonical Gos- 
pels, and adds that " he is now firmly convinced 
that the process of origin and growth by which 
the Thora attained its final form, extends down to 



APPENDIX. 223 

the post-exilic epoch, and perhaps had not been 
perfected at the time when the Samaritan Penta- 
teuch and the Greek translation came into ex- 
istence. So much the more firmlj do we take 
our stand upon the Mosaic origin and revealed 
character of its (the Thora's) basis/' 

e. J. Wellhausen's views: Even the Decalogue 
is not Mosaic. The covenant book, Ex. xx. 22 to 
ch. xxiii. 19, is " given to a people stationary and 
perfectly accustomed to an agricultural life.'' 
J. belongs " to the golden period of Hebrew lit- 
erature, the time of the kings and prophets, pre- 
ceding the destruction of both Israelitish king- 
doms by the Assyrians." "It is worthy of note 
that after the blessing of Balaam, J. suddenly 
breaks off. Only in Num. xxv. 1-5 and Deut. 
xxxiv. one might be inchned to find some trace 
of this noble historic work, e, g., xxxiv, 7b." E.^ 
shows us a more progressive and fundamental 
religiousness, and treats also of the subjugation 
of Canaan. " Both sources have perhaps under- 
gone several enlarged editions and are combined 
not as J.^ and E."^ but as J.^ and E.^ " D. com- 
posed shortly before the eighteenth year of 
Josiah and at that time containing only chapters 
xii.-xxvi., underwent, "not before the exile," two 
enlarged editions independent of one another. 
The union of the two editions and the insertion of 
the work thus composed into J. E.'^ took place 
perhaps in immediate connection with the work on 
Deuteronomy by which J. and E.- were blended 
into J. E.^ Lev. xvii.-xxvL, is a collection of laws 



224 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

which originated in the exile, between Ezekiel 
and the priest code, but nearer Ezekiel, al- 
though not composed by him. It was embodied 
into P. in a suitable form. The part of the Hex- 
ateuch remaining after the separation of J. E.2 
and D. is later than the exile, " does not bear the 
character of strict unity," but is " a conglomerate, 
as it were, of the work of an entire school." 
Around a fundamental germ, Q., which was re- 
markable for its historic system, there have sprung 
up (irrespective of earlier additions) " a number 
of secondary and tertiary growths which in form 
do not belong to it, but in material are perfectly 
homogeneous; so that the whole maybe regarded, 
not as a literary, but as an historic unity.'' The 
legislation of the middle books (Ex. xxv.-xxxi., 
XXXV. -xl.. Lev., Num. i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.-xxxvi., 
with insigniticant exceptions) ; standing in closest 
relations with Q. in language and contents, as well 
as by direct references, is designated as a priest- 
code. As originally belonging to Q. are proven 
only: Ex. xxv.-xxix., Lev. ix., x. 1-5, 12-15; 
ch. xvi. Num. i. 1-16. i. 48 to ch. iii., ix. 15 to ch. 
X. 28; chs. xvi. partly, xvii., xviii., xxv., 6-19; xxvi. 
xxvii., xxxii., partly, xxxiii. 50 to ch. xxxvi. This 
legislative and historical work, already inserted 
into J. E.^ D., was published and introduced by 
Ezra in the year 444; " for there is no doubt that 
the law of Ezra was the entire Pentateuch." 

/. K. H. Graf, although he died July 16, 1869, 
must be mentioned here on account of the great 
influence which his main theory has exerted and 



APPENDIX, 225 

still exerts. He declared on the basis of liis in- 
vestigations into the history of the cultus, that 
the central legislation of the Pentateuch bore the 
most unmistakable traces of a composition after 
the exile. The objections of Noldeke and Eiehm 
convinced Graf that the fundamental writing 
(Grundschrift) could not be divided in such a 
manner. The result was, not that he withdrew 
his assertion, but in a brief essay composed shortly 
before his death, he declared that the whole so- 
called fundamental writing was the product of an 
age after the exile; that J. was composed in the 
middle of the eighth century, or about the time 
of Ahaz; D. shortly before the eighteenth year of 
Josiah; the Deuteronomist (Inserter of D.), in the 
jfirst half of the exile; P., after the exile, intro- 
duced by Ezra; insertion in J. D. soon after 
Ezra. 

g. Ed. Reuss says: "The Decalogue is perhaps 
the very oldest piece of the written legislation, but 
is not Mosaic." The covenant book belongs pre- 
sumably to the time of Jehoshaphat (See 2 Chron. 
xvii. 7) ; the so-called second decalogue, Ex. xxxiv. 
11 ff. is very near it in time; J., the book of sacred 
history, embracing the fulfilment of the promises 
by the possession of the promised land, composed 
by an Israelite of the ten tribes in the second half 
of the ninth century, before the destruction of the 
Ephraimite kingdom, has at a later period been 
so wrought together with the perhaps older E.'^ 
that a "separation is almost impossible." In the 
eighteenth year of Josiah was brought to light 



226 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

D. *'an alleged discovery of the priests." It had 
been written immediately before this, with the 
purpose of prescribing and establishing as state 
law, "the fundamental principles of the theo- 
cratic constitution." It consisted of Deuteronomy 
v.-xxvi., xxviii. Between the first captivity and 
the destruction of the state, D. was joined to J. 
E.^, but not by the writer of D. The section Lev. 
xvii.-xxvi. is not preserved in its ancient form, but 
is interwoven with newer parts. The fundamen- 
tal part is younger than D., written after the time 
of Ezekiel but before that of Ezra. The work 
promulgated by Ezra in the year 444 was not 
the entire Pentateuch, and was not brought fin- 
ished from Babylon by Ezra, but was written be- 
tween 458 and 444. The historic frame-work of 
this composition, " a bare fiction "...." dreams 
of an impoverished race," was written by one 
hand; the principal contents, however, are "a 
collection of laws from different sources." In the 
time between Nehemiah and Alexander, the code 
of Ezra, a number of special laws, and J. E.'^ D. 
were joined to form one whole, with little skill 
and less historic sense, inasmuch as the principle 
was followed that nothing essential which was 
then in existence should be lost. "The prophets 
are to be recognized as older than the law and 
the psalms as younger than both." 

A discussion of all the preceding characteristic 
views is of course impossible in this place. We 
will give here, at first, a few general remarks; 



APPENDIX. 227 

then, a condensed discussion upon the methods 
of treating the problems of Pentateuch criticism 
which in their time have excited most attention; 
and finally some observations upon the composi- 
tion of the Hexateuch, especially the views of 
Wellhausen and Schrader. 

GENERAL DETERMINING PRINCIPLES. 

a. Criticism must employ upon the Old Testa- 
ment essentially the same means and methods as 
upon other productions of literature. Miracles 
and prophecies, however, must not of themselves 
be turned against the Old Testament to disprove 
its authenticity and genuineness. Criticism ope- 
rates too much with the theory of vaticinium pod 
eventum and of the incredibility of miracles. The 
specific difference of the religion of the Old Tes- 
tament, its character as revelation, stands firmly 
fixed in our belief; therefore we will not demand 
that the rule of natural rectilinear development 
shall extend over all the history of Israel. 

b. Great precaution is necessary in drawing- 
arguments from the linguistic traits of a book or 
section of the Old Testament. In the first place, 
the old Hebrew literature preserved to us, is but 
of small extent. In the second place, copyists 
often unintentionally, no doubt, substituted for 
the archaisms and other obscurities, expres- 
sions which seemed to them more natural and 
clear. (For analogies compare the new edition 
of Luther's Bible with the original publication). 
Thirdly: Upon the whole we may be justified in 



228 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

pronouncing from diversity of style upon a differ- 
ence of au'thorship rather than of time. Fourthly : 
Even if vre find truth in the opinion that " The 
Hebrew language is incapable of presenting one 
and the same thought in various forms as most 
European languages can do; that it is too re- 
stricted for this, is too clumsy in style; that when 
the thought has once found a correct expression 
any change of form is by the spirit of the lan- 
guage prohibited; and it then passes as current 
coin ": yet we cannot well deny the possibility that 
the language of an author of special spiritual force 
might vary at different epochs and in different 
circumstances. 

c. A written code of law, especially a rather 
extensive one, may exist for a long time without 
having a universal canonical acceptation, and 
without being known beyond more or less nar- 
row circles. 

d. If it is shown that an account or a statement 
has been committed to writing in relatively late 
time, we need not necessarily conclude that the 
essential part of it had not been correctly handed 
down or understood. Oral tradition has been 
of value not to Talmudic Judaism for the first 
time. Such laws especially as have reference not 
so much to the people as to the priesthood, may 
have been preserved within the latter for a long 
time by tradition. — More depends upon the cred- 
ibility of what is declared in the Pentateuch con- 
cerning history and legislation, than upon the 
question how much of it Moses wrote. 



APPENDIX, 229 

e. In regard to the conclusions which are drawn 
from the separate documents as to the character 
of these documents, we must bear in mind that 
each redactor has chosen out of the different 
sources what was best adapted to his own pur- 
poses, so that between the complete accounts there 
has often been either no contradiction, or at least 
much less than exists now when we compare the 
incomplete accounts. Here we must mention, too, 
that criticism, in its separation of documents, in 
many places depends entirely or essentially upon 
the conception which it has formed of the char- 
acter of individual documents, on the basis of 
other verses and sections which had been already 
separated on account of their linguistic qualities. 
/. Many differences in the legal portions of the 
Pentateuch are avoided by observing the prin- 
ciple : Distinque tempora. One must discriminate 
whether a law regards the time of Israel's sojourn 
in the desert or its settlement in Canaan. 

THE VIEW OF GRAP AND WELLHAUSEN. 

a. The views of scholars as to the origin of the 
Pentateuch, as the above comparison has shown, 
differ in very many points. All differences, how- 
ever, are of little moment when compared with 
the great opposition which Graf, Aug. Kayser, 
Eeuss, Wellhausen and others have carried into 
the ranks of the investigators. Up to this time 
P. was regarded as the oldest original writing, 
or at least one of the oldest, and was considered 
as credible at least in its principal points. Up 



230 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

to this time the view was prevalent that the Pen- 
tateuch, either in its present form or its separate 
original writings, had been completed before the 
exile. The latest school admits that, of extant 
written laws, the covenant-book alone existed in 
ancient times; then come the purely historical 
works E.2 and J. (or J. and E.^ or J. E.^); there- 
upon D. follows, as first comprehensive law code ; 
then Ezekiel's Thora, Ez. xl.-xlviii. then the law of 
sanctification, and last of all P. Wellhausen and 
others think that the Pentateuch was completed 
in the year 444; according to Graf, Kayser and 
Reuss only P., or even only the principal part of 
P. was sanctioned in the above year. 

The wide sweep of this arrangement becomes 
apparent when we consider how wholly different 
from all previous notions, the course of Israelitish 
history is presented by using the results of the 
Graf-Wellhausen criticism. Here we will give 
some intimations of this new drift, on the basis 
of Wellhausen's spirited "History of Israel." 

1. The place of worship. The historical and 
prophetical books afford no trace of an exclusively 
authorized sanctuary for Hebrew antiquity. The 
denunciations of the prophets are not directed 
against the places of worship or their number, 
but against the false estimate of worship and the 
abuses connected with it, (p. 23). The Jehovist 
J. E.^ sanctions the plurality of altars. The de- 
struction of Samaria favored efforts at centraliz- 
ation. D. demands local unity of worship, P. pre- 
supposes it and transfers it to antiquity by means 



APPENDIX, 231 

of the tabernacle of the covenant, which as a cen- 
tral sanctuary and as a depositary for the ark 
can nowhere be found in historical tradition. 

2. The sacrifices. According to J. E.^, sacrifice 
is an ante-Mosaic custom; according to P. it is 
not. According to J. E."*^ with whom the histori- 
cal and prophetical books harmonize, the impor- 
tant question concerns the person; according 
to P. the technicahties of the sacrifice, as well as 
the when, where, and by whom, and also es- 
pecially the how (p. 53). P. introduces the sin- 
offering and the expiatory sacrifice, of which no 
trace can be found in the Old Testament before 
Ezekiel (p. 75). By the centralization of worship 
at Jerusalem, the harmony of sacrifice with the 
natural occurrences of life was destroyed, and 
sacrifices had lost their original character. 

3. The same thing occurred with reference to 
the festivals which originally celebrated the be- 
ginning (Easter) and the end (Pentecost) of har- 
vest, and the grape gathering, (Autumn). P., 
moreover, increases the number of festivals by 
the great day of atonement which took its origin 
from the fast-days of the exile (p. 113). The 
Sabbath year, too, and the year of jubilee were 
not added until late, i. e., in the collection of laws 
received and compiled by P. (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.) 

4. Priests and Levites. In the oldest period 
of Israel's history we do not find the distinction 
between priests and laymen. Every one is al- 
lowed to kill and sacrifice; priests by calling of- 
ficiate only at greater religious services. Accord- 



232 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

ingly we find in the oldest parts of J. E.s no 
mention of priests, no Aaron with Moses. In 
hoary antiquity there was once a tribe Levi, but 
it had already disappeared in the time of the 
judges. Later on Levi is the official name of the 
members of the priestly families; and out of 
the Levites grew a spiritual tribe or rather a 
caste by the name of Levi collectively, which 
hereditary priesthood, according to the repre- 
sentation of the later writers, from the time of 
D. already existed in the beginning of IsraeHtish 
history. 

According to Ezekiel xliv. only the Levites of 
Jerusalem, the sons of Zadoc, are to remain 
priests in the new Jerusalem ; the other Levites 
are to be degraded into their servants, and 
stripped of their priestly rights. According to 
P. the Levites have never had the right of priest- 
hood, but only the sons of Aaron, who corre- 
spond to the sons of Zadoc. The keystone of the 
sacred edifice which P. erects, is the high priest. 
A figure of such incomparable importance is a 
stranger to the remainder of the Old Testament. 
The existence of a theocratic King by his side 
cannot be conceived. 

5. The inherited rights of the clergy. In an- 
tiquity the sacrifices were holy meals, to which 
priests also were invited if perchance any one of 
them were present. The owner of a sanctuaiy 
employed priests for hire, but these had no legal 
claims to certain fixed portions of meat. D. al- 
ready makes some demand of this nature (xviii. 



APPENDIX. 233 

3); P. demands much more (vii. 34). The things 
set apart become legal income to the priests, and, 
in addition, are doubled. The forty-eight Levite 
towns are a fiction, for which the starting-point 
lies perhaps in the conception of the future Is- 
rael imagined by Ezekiel. 

A CKITICISM OF THESE THEORIES. 

We will now give some contributions to a cor- 
rect estimate of this newest phase of Pentateuch 
criticism. A portion of the remarks following 
can perhaps be applied to other views also. 

a. The Egyptians had in very early times a rich 
literature, and were a people greatly addicted to 
wi'iting. The Jews were always susceptible to 
the influence of foreigners. Must they not have 
begun to note down many things already in Egypt ? 
Would not especially Moses, the adopted son of 
Pharaoh's daughter, the man educated in all the 
wisdom of the Egyptians, have described the 
great deeds which G-od did through him ? 

h. Egypt had a numerous and influential caste 
of priests of different orders, dating from an- 
tiquity. So too Israel may be supposed to have 
possessed a priesthood early, and not to have re- 
mained a thousand years without written laws 
for its priests. We may very weU assume that 
the priest Moses gave directions for a ritual 
(Ex. xxiv. 6 ff.; Deut. xxxiii. 10; Ps. xcix. 6). 
There is no want, indeed, of testimonies to the 
early existence of a priestly, that is, a ritualistic, 
Thora, which is recognized, not for the first time 



23 A HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 



after the exile. Deut. xxxiii. 10; Micah iii. 11; 
Jer. xviii. 18; Ez. vii. 26; Zeph. iii. 4; Hosea iii. 
4, show that there was a copious written Thora 
of this kind (Bredenkamp, " Law and Prophets," 
pp. 36-40). Especially Deuteronomy, which, 
whenever it may have been composed, was at 
any rate in existence in the eighteenth year of 
Josiah, is rich in passages testifying to this fact. 
Comp. Deut. xviii. 2 (^ -i3n "it^XD) with Numbers 
xviii., XX., xxiii. ff.; further, Deuteronomy xxiv. 
8, where in Dri'^^V "IL^^XD there is a reference to a 
priestly Thora upon leprosy, such a one as lies 
before us in Lev. xiii. 14. '^Wherever Deuter- 
onomy contents itself with a general outline and 
sketch of precepts which demand special or ad- 
ditional rules for practice, we may conclude that 
the more special rules were already in exist- 
ence which it presupposes and to which it re- 
fers " (Delitzsch). 

c. The new theory leaves the fundamental pe- 
riods of Israel's history without literature; no 
laws or historical records of Moses, no psalms of 
David, no proverbs of Solomon. 

d. The fact that we find in the books after the 
exile more numerous and exact references to the 
Pentateuch and its original writings than in those 
before the exile, is to be accounted for by the 
fact that with Ezra begins an entirely new pe- 
riod, that of the scribes. In the circumstance 
that in the entire prophetic literature there is 
wanting a demand even for inner holiness, there 
lies " a grave admonition to deal cautiously with 



APPENDIX. 235 

the non-ap23earanc3 of certain thoughts in par- 
ticular books/' as Baudissin once well remarked. 

e. The theory of Graf and Wellhausen not only 
supplants God as a factor in the history of Israel, 
but must often have recourse abundantly to the 
very precarious assumption of the presence of 
fictions. 

f, A main reliance of the representatives of 
the newest school is a conclusion to the non- 
existence of a certain law from the neglect of its 
observance. This conclusion, however, by no 
means carries absolute weight of conviction. 
Comp. e. g., Jer. xvi. 6 with Deut. xiv. 1. When 
we reflect upon the corruption of the priests, 
whose essential duty was to teach (complaints 
of the prophets, e. g., Jer. xxvii. 7 ff. ; Micah iii. 
11; Zeph. iii 4; Isa. often) we shall quite readily 
perceive that '' the transmitted laws remained 
lying in the temple's archives, instead of govern- 
ing the life of the people" (Bredenkamp, p. 200). 

g. Partly from a critical, partly fi'om an exe- 
getical, point of view, the writings of the Old 
Testament often experience violent treatment to 
make them harmonize with the recent construc- 
tion of history. In proof of this a few examples 
are enough. 

a, Pentateuch. The book of covenant. Ex- 
odus XX., xxiv., XXV., according to Wellhausen 
C'Hist," p. 30 ff.) sanctions the liberty to sacri- 
fice ever;)^where. The command ")C>i< Dlporr^^n 
''D^k^^TlX "i''3TX he satisfies himself to exj^lain thus: 
''That means nothing more than that they did 



236 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH, 

not like (!) to consider a spot where the inter- 
course between heaven and earth took place as 
a spot arbitrarily chosen, but regarded it as 
somehow (!) selected by Deit}^ itself for this ser- 
vice." The actual truth is that this passage for- 
bids to choose the place of sacrifice according to 
mere human choice; and that it does not indeed 
exclude a plurality of authorized places of sac- 
rifice at the same time, while it neither presup- 
poses nor demands them. And the command, 
likewise contained in the covenant book, to ap- 
pear three times annually before Jehovah (Ex. 
xxiii. 17) certainly points decisively to a centrali- 
zation. Compare Delitzsch, '' Stud.," 1880, pp. 
64, 341, 562, f.; Bredenkamp, pp. 129, 139. 
With "Wellhausen's conclusions from Deuteron- 
omy xxxiii. 8-11, pp. 138-140, compare Breden- 
kamp, pp. 173-180. 

/i. According to Wellhausen, the historical 
books have undergone numerous revisions and 
reconstructions, by which ideas of later times 
were always introduced. . . . "retouches to ex- 
plain and to obviate diflficulties. The whole an- 
cient tradition is covered with these as with a 
Judaistic digestive-fluid," (p. 290). The whole 
historic treatment in the book of Kings is a pious 
Pragmatik, historically inadmissible, (p. 136). On 
p. 299 we read that "In Kings from time to time 
a new prophet is put forward who utters himself 
in the spirit of D. and the language of Jeremiah 
and Ezekiel, and then disappears;" and on p. 
302, " The anonymous prophets, i. 20, who are all 



APPENDIX. 237 

afterwards collectively inserted for the purpose 
of a detailed vaticiniura ex eveniu, because Israel- 
itish history is never complete without this appen- 
dage." A particularly unfavorable judgment is 
passed upon Chronicles: e. g., p. 219, "Where the 
chronicles run parallel with the other canonico- 
historical books, they contain no enrichment, but 
merely a coloring of tradition through time-serv- 
ing-motives," p. 631. " Therefore in Chronicles 
there can be no mention of a tradition from before 
the exile "; p. 129, " Artificial Genealogies." More 
favorable and yet critical is Dillmann's view of 
Chronicles in this encyclopaedia (III., pp. 223, 
224). The narration Neh. viii.-x. is wrongly in- 
terpreted to mean that in the year 444, the Pen- 
tateuch, till then unknown, was published and 
solemnly introduced by Ezra. (Thus Well- 
hausen, Graf and others.) The picture which 
the entire tradition beginning with the book 
Ezra-Nehemiah gives us of Ezra, does not har- 
monize with the j)icture drawn by the modern 
Pentateuch criticism. (Cf. Delitzsch's "Papers 
for Lutheran Theology," XXXVIII, 1877, pp. 445- 
50. ) In order to set aside a proof for the hereditar- 
iness of the priesthood among the descendants 
of Aaron, Wellhausen must falsely conclude from 
1 Sam. ii. 27 ff. that " Zadoc was the founder of an 
absolutely new line " ; he is permitted to be neither 
priest nor even Levite ; the divine threat, however, 
is not directed against Eli's entire father's house but 
only against his own family. Wellhausen says (p. 
26), " Hezekiah is said even then to have made an 



238 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

attempt to abolish the places of sacrifice outside 
of Jerusalem, which however passed bj without 
leaving any traces, and is therefore of a doubtful 
character/' But according to p. 28 the reforma- 
tion of Josiah would hardly have pervaded the 
people had it not been for the exile following; 
therefore, even according to Wellhausen, want of 
success furnishes no cause for doubt. 

X- The prophets. Here too the criticism is 
not wanting in procedures which are at least 
hazardous. Thus N")2, Amos iv. 13, Jer. iv. 5, is 
said not to be originall}^ there (Wellh. p. 349). 
Joel is regarded by almost all the followers of the 
Graf-hypothesis as a post-exile writer, etc. The 
cases of exegetical violence are numerous and im- 
portant. They fail to see that law and prophecy 
have two entirely different purposes. The differ- 
ence between the priest code and the prophets 
is swelled out into an irreconcilable contradiction. 
They do not regard the moral character of the rit- 
ual law, do not consider that P. knows only of a sin 
and trespass-offering for those transgressions 
known as sins of weakness (Cf. Bredenkamp, p. 56, 
57). The proj)hets do not oppose alawfulmanner of 
sacrifice but the practice of the people. Breden- 
kamp rightly demands that a discrimination should 
be made between the utterances of the prophets 
of the northern kingdom and those of the king- 
dom of Juda on account of their difference of cir- 
cumstances : In the northern kingdom the warfare 
is waged more against what is heathenish in wor- 
ship ; in the southern against what is but the out- 



APPENDIX, 239 

ward form of worship. On the passages m the 
prophets against the sacrifices, compare K. Marti's 
"Yearbooks for Prot. Theol./' VL, 1880, pp. 308- 
323; upon Amos v. 21-27 see Bredenkamp, pp. 
83-90 ; upon Jer. vii. 21 ff. id., 108-112. Although 
not a consideration convincing to every one, 3^et 
it deserves to be mentioned that by this modern 
criticism upon P., God is brought into contradic- 
tion with himself: what the older prophets con- 
demned, became after the exile Israel's law and 
the basis of the later discourses of the proj)hets. 

d. The Poetical Books. The book of Job is de- 
clared to have been written after the time of Jer- 
emiah, e. g., by Wellhausen, ace. to Bleek, Intr. p. 
543, note. W. Kobt. Smith Old Test. 381. Cer- 
tainly Job i. 5 does not suic the new construction 
of the history of sacrifices. Wellhausen's judg- 
ment upon the psalms (among other places in p. 
507, note) is this: ''The question is, not whether 
there were any psalms written after the exile, but 
whether there were any written before if If 
Psalm xl. 7 ("Sacrifice and offering thou didst 
not desire ") was written before the exile then the 
sin-offering was mentioned even before Ezekiel 
(against Wellhausen, p. 75, and Smend on Ezek. 
xl. 39) ; but if — what we do not believe — the Psalm 
was written after the exile, the quite similar utter- 
ances, Amos v., Jer. vii., do not exclude the exist- 
ence of a law of sacrifices at an earlier period. 
Comp. Bredenk., pp. 59-63, or W. H. Green, 
Presbyt. Kev. 1882, Jan. No., 142-3. 

h. The addition of the priest code. P. contains 



240 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

a series of laws which after the exile were aim- 
less and impracticably. Urim and Thummim, Ex. 
xxviii. 30; Lev. viii. 8; Num. xxvii. 21. Comp. 
Ezra ii. 63; Neh. vii. 65. Year of jubilee, Lev. 
XXV. 8 ff. Levite towns, Num. xxxv. 1 ff. Law of 
booty. Num. xxxi. 25 ff. In P. are designated 
those services only, which the Levifces were to 
render during their journey through the desert; 
for their residence in the holy land no express 
provision was made. Such a fiction, as Bre- 
denkamp has already observed, would be most 
wonderful. 

Quite a lively discussion is now carried on 
concerning the relation of P, especially the law 
of sanctification, to Ezekiel (H. G-., Dillmann's S.) 
Careful comparison of philological usage shows 
that Ezekiel is dependent upon H. Gr. and P, and 
not the contrar}^; Compare the references of 
D. Hoffmann, Magazine for Judaistic Science 
(1879, 210-215), which Smend in his Comm. upon 
Ezek. p. XXV. -xxviii. has not noticed, perhaps has 
not been able to notice. Essential differences 
exist between Ezekiel and P. E. g. Ezek. (xl. 18 
ff.) appoints numbers and kinds of sacrifices for 
the several days of the year quite different from 
P. (See Smend's Tables, p. 377). A priest might 
perhaps change the wording of the law ; but it is 
inconceivable that any one, after the time of 
Ezekiel, and especially in a period which clings 
entirely to the written word, could introduce, 
without encountering the slightest opposition, a 
new unknown, anonymous production, essentially 



APPENDIX. 241 

diverging from the law of the prophets which 
claimed divine authority. Especial weight is 
laid upon the assertion that D. recognized no 
difference between priests and Levites; that all 
Levites were authorized to officiate as priests; 
that in Ezek. xliv. 5 ff. the degradation of the 
Levites to be temple-servants and the right of 
the descendants of Zadoc only to the priesthood 
were enjoined; that P. presupposed the injunc- 
tion of Ezek. always to have existed, in which 
only the venerable ancient name (sons of Aaron) 
was put in place of the historical name (sons of 
Zadoc), in order to beep up the appearance of 
the Mosaic time, (Wellh. p. 128). But the as- 
sertion is a false one, that Ezekiel was the first 
who made any difference between priests and 
Levites. With Zerubbabel and Joshua there re- 
turned (ace. to Ezra ii. 36 ff.; Neh. vii. 43) 4289 
priests but only 341 (Neh. 360) Levites; a num- 
ber of Levites so small certainly not because 
they feared the degradation threatened by Ezek- 
iel, but because the position of the Levites even 
before the exile had been a subordinate one. 
From Ezra ii. 63 w^e see that the jDOSsession of 
the full right of priesthood was rigidly connected 
with the proved fact of belonging to the priestly 
tribe. Ezekiel himself presupposes the differ- 
ence between priest and Levite as self-evident, 
xl. 45ff.;xlii. 13;xliii. 19. 

We can conclusively show that many laws of 
the priest code are older than Deuteronomy. 
The assertion that the command (Lev. xvii. Iff), 



242 J//STOA'V /X THE PENTATEUCH. 

to saeritice at the ark of the <.'ovonant only, is post- 
deuteronoinie, or indeed post-exilio is, as Dill- 
mann severely but justlv eharaeterized it, di- 
reetly repu^*nant to eoninion sense. (Comni. 
upon Ex. Lev. p. 5o5\ Oonip. Pent. xii. 15; 
XV. 22. The eonmiand must liave been given 
durino- the wandering* in the desert. Pelitzseli 
(Stud. 1880. No. ii. p. 65), remarks that ** among 
the nomads Initehering is an infrequent and al- 
ways festive oecurrenee. These people live mostly 
upon vegetables. Sueh was the ease with Israel. 
Flesh was a rarity in the tirst, and even in tlie 
fortieth year of their wanderings. The tabernaele 
was, in faet, more a plaee of revelation than of 
saeritlee. On aeeount of the ditheulty of proeur- 
ing animals for saeritiee, the killing of animals 
for family use may have \hhmi proportionately 
infrequent; so mueh tlie more praetieable was 
the law. Lev. xvii., whieh, from the idolatrous 
tendeneies of the people eonvineingly shows it- 
self to be a preventive law. Comp. Bredenkamp 
p. 120 ff., 132 tV. From a eomparison of Dent. xiv. 
3-20 with Lev. xi. 2-23 we draw the eontident eon- 
elusion that the originality is not on the side of Deu- 
teronomy, but that Deuteronomy has drawn either 
direetly from Lev. xi. (Ewald, KnobU\ Kiehm, 
perhaps rightly) or from the original aeeord- 
ing \y> whieh Lev. xi. was shaped. (DillmannV 
K.' :Marti. ^Yearbook for Prot. Theol., 1880, 
p. 328, 331V gives us some eonelusive evidenee 
to prove that D. even in its language \i\ (;., iv. 
lG-18), tVQd in the matter of the narration \\. 23; 



APPENDIX. 243 

X. 1, 2, 22), sometimes shows dependence upon 

p. (Q). 

Yet we must consider the langna^cfe of P. As 
we have previously remarked, undoubtedly many 
archaisms have disappeared from the texts of the 
Hebrew Bible in the course of time, and have 
been replaced by later expressions; and this 
modernizing of the language has taken place 
in different books in very different degrees on 
account of their varying modes of usage. Con- 
clusions therefore in regard to the time of com- 
position on linguistic grounds can be drawn only 
to a limited extent, namely in such wise that one 
may specify a period as probably the latest, with- 
out excluding an essentially earlier origin. It is 
therefore, to be noted that V. Eyssels careful 
but not delinitive labor, " De ElohistiB ( =:P.) Pen- 
tateuchici sermone" (Leipsic, 1878, p. 12), has 
arrived at results which are incom23atible with 
the composition of P. after the exile. We will 
mention here also the small but instructive com- 
position of Delitzsch concerning the Elohistic de- 
signations of color (]Mag. for Luth. Tlieol. 1878, 
pp. 590, 596; previously in English in the "Le- 
vitical Priest" by Curtiss). 

i. Annexation of Deuteronomy. According to 
Graf's school and also many other Old Testament 
critics, Deuteronomy was composed shortly be- 
fore the reform of Josiah. Weighty reasons 
oppose this view. In the first place, the ac- 
count of its discovery. The high priest Hil- 
kiah said to Shaphan, (II Kings xxii. 8), " I have 



244 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH 

found the book of law in the house of Jehovah/* 
Therefore the book found, i. e., the contents were 
not only known to him; but in his opinion, must 
be known to others also. The book was found 
in the house of Jehovah, where was its natural 
and designated place, (Deut. xxxi. 26). That, on 
the occasion j^erhaps of the cleaning of the holy 
of holies it was laid into a chamber of the tem- 
ple and found there on the occasion of exten- 
sive repairs, is a supposition quite obvious and 
thoroughly valid ; since the assumption of a forg- 
ery as we shall presently see, is impossible. The 
question as to the contents of the book found, 
Avill be answered very differently according to 
the position which the person who answers, 
occupies in regard to the criticism of the Pen- 
tateuch, at least in regard to the fundamental 
material of Deuteronomy. For from Deut. xxviii. 
the words of the prophetess Huida are explained, 
and from the contents of Deuteronomy Josiah's 
reform is explained. Let us supj^ose that the 
words of the king (II Kings xxxii. 13), " because 
our fathers have not hearkened to the words of 
this book," are a bold composition of the writer of 
the Book of Kings, and let us suppose further 
that the great impression which the book imme- 
diately made upon the king, had been caused by 
the powerful testimony of God's spirit, and the 
king had no motive to inquire after the origin 
and the author of a writing so remarkable — yet 
how shall we explain the fact that the book found 
such a reception, so sudden, universal, and free 



APPENDIX. 245 

from opposition. An external attestation must 
have accompanied. Hilkiali? Immediately after 
the new constimction of Israel's history, the demand 
of D. to give to Levites of the province, i. e., to 
the priests of the local sanctuaries, equal priestly 
rights with themselves at Jerusalem, must have 
been very unwelcome to the priests at Jerusalem. 
Nevertheless Hilkiah and the priests at Jerusa- 
lem make no opposition, raise not the least ques- 
tion, yes, they even assist in enforcing the new- 
found law; and this is conclusive evidence that 
there already resided in the law-book when it 
was found an irresistible authority. We may 
fairly doubt whether those mighty phrases "his- 
torically-inadmissible criterion" and ''pious prag- 
matik " can make void all the testimonies, which 
the decision pronounced in the Book of Kings 
upon the rulers of Juda and Israel give to the 
earlier vahdity at least of the laws of Deuteronomy. 
Isaiah xix. 19, "In that day shall there be an 
altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt 
and a j)illar at the border thereof to the Lord." 
"Isaiah," say most of the later critics, and last 
W. Eobertson Smith (0. T. P. 354), "could not 
bring a forbidden symbol, e. g., a Mazzeba, into 
connection with Jehovah. This passage gives 
us a superior limit for the date of the code of 
Deuteronomy. Isaiah cannot have known the 
code. But in Deut. xvi. 21, 22 only idolatrous 
Mazzeboth, such as are worshipped, are forbidden; 
and this law is in harmony with the j)assages ad- 
mitted to be old (Ex. xxiii. 24; xxxiv., 13. Comp. 



246 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH. 

also Lev. xxvi. 1). Moses himself erected twelve 
Mazzeboth at the altar. Ex. xxiv. 4: and so even 
from this point of view we gain the undoubted 
right to find in the proceedings of Hezekiah, (2 
Kings xviii. 4) a recognition of the demand for a 
central sanctuary which, it has been pretended, 
was put forth much later, as late as the last quar- 
ter of the seventh century. Herein is a recogni- 
tion of the law of Deuteronomy. 

As the origin of P. in the time after the exile 
would be inconceivable, so Deuteronomy contains 
much that by no means harmonizes with the sup- 
position that this book was written in the time of 
Josiah. D. speaks in friendly terms of Egypt, 
(xxiii. 8) . Hov7 different Isaiah xxx. Iff., xxx. 1 ; Jer. 
ii. 18, 36. D. speaks in a friendly way of Edom, 
xxiii. 8, and utters harsh words against Moab and 
Ammon. Just the opposite are God's words in 
Jeremiah's mouth, xlix. 17, 18; xlviii. 47; xlix. 6; 
Compare in regard to Edom, Joel iv. 19; Obad. ; 
Isa. Ixiii. 1-6. Of what use in Josiah's time would 
be the laws on the extermination of the Canaanites, 
(Deut. XX. 16-18) and the Amalekites (xxv. 17-19) 
and those on subjugation (xx. 10-15) and war 
(xx. 19-20). How can the law of Kings ch. xvii. 
have originated so late ? 

h. While Wellhausen and his followers find the 
code of Ezra identical with the entire Pentateuch 
(with the exception of a few glosses, perhaps 
added later), Graf, Kayser, Eeuss and others 
take the view that Ezra has inserted only P. 
or its principal part. They thus avoid many 



APPENDIX, 247 

rocks upon which his ship springs a leak. In 
place of these, other reefs endanger them. We 
will mention at least two of these here. If Ezra 
introduced only P. which, as is said, contradicts 
D. violently, we must assume for D. a time of 
concealment after the exile, which is improbable 
and cannot be proven. The Samaritans can 
hardly have received the Pent, later than Nehe- 
miah's time. ( Josephus Archaeol. xi. 7, 8. Comp. 
Neh. xiii. 28.) 

Strack closes his article with the analysis of 
the Pentateuch by WeUhausen and by Schrader. 
We omit these, as well as his copious references 
to the literature of this subject. 








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